Autor: Markus Gram

The economic analysis of physical assets over the entire life cycle is essential in modern industry. Particularly, in investment decisions, not only the pure expenditure for the procurement is used. Life cycle costing considers the required investments of a production site’s life cycle as a whole. In order to reduce the life cycle costs it is necessary to identify, analyze and derive corresponding measures. In practice, the data tracking over several periods is challenging. The following paper shows how the new IT approach of cyber-physical systems can improve such data collection. Furthermore, it will be shown how this database supports future investment decisions as well as the selection of life cycle support services.

For the design of an agile production system in addition to the holistic view of production and its internal and external links, a detailed analysis of individual components is necessary. These elements are general manufacturing equipment in various types of expression. To investigate and valuate the properties of these components primarily key figures and indicators are used. In the field of facility and maintenance management the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) parameter is widely used to determine the equipment efficiency. This indicator is an integral part of a holistic maintenance management. Recent developments use the OEE value as a basis to evaluate the whole value chain to get a holistic view of the included equipment. This integrated approach is an essential component for assessing the flexibility of production systems, which presents itself in three different dimensions.