Autor: Egon Müller

The paper highlights the importance of standards and standardisation especially for multinational enterprises. At the same time the threat of a not adequately reflected over-standardisation is recognised which is tied to risks like transaction costs and “idle power”. In the paper it is discussed to what extend it is possible to evaluate standards and standardisation in multinational enter- prises in terms of effort and benefits. This evaluation is anchored within a concept of standard management at a strategic level.

The article presents an approach for the integration of the energy efficiency in factory planning processes. The main focus is not on the constructional hull but rather on the energy-efficient designing of production processes and production plants. The approach is of general validity but in the present example it is applied to the automotive industry. Main contents of the approach are aimed at the life cycle consideration of production plants.

Production in networks and clusters is gaining more and more importance in theory and practice. Micro enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises possess a high potential of networking. Innovative concepts, like concepts of Competence-cell-based Networks and Clusters, can exploit this potential. For this a three-layer procedural model of the production network formation, an upward compatible cluster concept including technical-organisational and spatial-infrastructural aspects as well as factors for success for networks and clusters are presented. Future strategies for a rethinking about these points in enterprises of production and service are pointed out as thesis.

Increasing competition in product costs leads worldwide to the need of process improvement - especially in small and medium-sized enterprises. Projects of production and logistics, with the aim of optimising process organisation and manufacturing control are assumed to have the knowledge of decisive system parameters and adequate possibilities in interference. Against this background the efficient use of the resource information is very important in future. Precisely because the use of RFID in production control has even more rationalisation potentials, when the process monitoring of production process must be fast, safe and efficient real time close controlled.