Autor: Horst Wildemann

Although the relocation trend has slightly decreased during the last five years, nowadays more companies plan to shift abroad in the near future. In particular small- and medium-sized companies plan the relocation of parts of their value chain. The disadvantage of the German location can only be compensated by a combination of cost optimization and an increase of productivity. A systematic procedure and the application of sophisticated evaluation tools support the company in its process of decision making. Considering the type of business, guidelines for competitive value chain management can be developed.

Approaches for a risk oriented ramp-up management can suit the purpose of closing the methodical gap between project management and production management. To develop management strategies for a risk oriented ramp-up management central ramp-up risks for a green field plant have been identified in the first step. A risk oriented scenario model leads to a quantification of possible effects resulting from the identified risks. To reach the goal of creating a ramp-up robust production system management strategies have been derived as constitutional elements of a preventive risk management. The management strategies aim at a minimisation as well as transformation of technical and organisational risks.

Medium-sized industrial enterprises apply resource planning systems for their business processes. Changing markets require permanent adaptation of these enterprises’ organisational structures and processes to ensure their efficiency and their competitiveness. However, currently applied standard software systems have proven to be insufficiently adaptable. They allow multiple configuration options during implementation and setup, but it is hardly possible to perform configuration changes during the application phase. Therefore software developers will have to focus on adaptable enterprise resource planning systems in future. Beyond the development phase (build time) technological progress caused by changing requirements also has to be synchronised simultaneously by current software releases during the application phase (run time).

Within the scope of a research project together with the companies Alcatel SEL, Conti Temic, Knorr-Bremse, Rohde & Schwarz and Webasto, a methodical approach has shown that many development projects have significant deviation from the planned process. This leads to negative effects on each success parameter of the development task, especially on time schedule and profitability. The objective of an optimized project management is to detect weak signals when differing the scheduled path. This information will be transferred immediately to project management. A concept was elaborated and effec-tiveness was proven in case studies.

Together with the companies Alcatel SEL, Knorr-Bremse, Rohde&Schwarz, Temic and Webasto by leadership of the author a BMBF sponsored research project has been carried out. The task and target of the project partners was to develop a reliable and workable forecasting model for duration and effort of an industrial development project. Up to now there is a lack of a systematic approach to forecast and to plan development time considering dynamic changes of the frame conditions. The following article describes the development and successful implementation of a forecasting model for development times and shows the effects by picturing and describing two case studies.