Autor: Herbert Jodlbauer

The developed Readiness Model supports enterprises to determine the current state in relation to Industry 4.0 as well as the target state. Based on strategy improvement measures are derived to succeed in attaining the target Industry 4.0 state. Enterprises profit by individualized understanding of Industry 4.0 and specific project proposals. The dissemination of Industry 4.0 is supported through this Readiness Model. In addition a benchmark data base is filled to enable comparisons of enterprises and to observe the historical development of the industry 4.0 readiness of several industries.

In this article an approach for capacity planning and control in highly volatile markets is presented. The main steps in cutting capacity cost are: • Ensure highly aggregated capacity groups • To maximize the customer oriented work ahead window by applying the customer order characteristic • To determin the long term capacity plan with few capacity levels • To apply a short term capacity adjustment tool with corrected due dates according the customer order characteristic

A simple production system enables to customer oriented manufacturing with low cost and high costumer service. The most four important ways to a simple production are covered by: • Reduction of the number of items (finished goods, intermediate as well as purchasing parts) • Setting of clear and non-conflicting objectives as well as prioritizing measurements needed • Organizing of a continuous production flow and • Applying monitoring instruments instead of detailed planning and scheduling tools

Because competition is getting harder and harder, outsourcing becomes more important for companies. Especially lower labour costs, opening up new markets and capacity bottlenecks are the main reasons for companies to source out. The influence of outsourcing onto a company’s profit and performance was examined on the basis of a survey of Austrian production companies. As a result you can also see risks and the effects of wrong outsourcing in this paper.

Production plant managers try to maximize the machine utilization. In this article it is shown that the operative responsible plant managers should minimize the machine utilization to guarantee minimum cost per unit. Only the sales force has the task to maximize the machine utilization. Operations Management has to organize the production efficiently and has to ensure to meet the customer due dates.