Autor: Michael Heins

Smooth logistics management is fundamental for companies to function effectively. This is challenged by actor- and organization-related barriers in production planning and management. The Berufliche Hochschule Hamburg fosters the skills that individuals need to overcome obstacles in digitalized working environments. This concept is presented in the following article.

Today globalization is a common challenge companies have to cope with. Cost aspects are still playing an essential role in this context. To ensure a long-term profitability, companies also have to consider non-monetary factors like core-competences. Besides globalization the increasing rate of ramp-ups caused by decreasing product life-cycles is a big challenge for companies. This article will introduce approaches to deal with the conflict of objectives between cost-reduction, safe-guarding of core-competences and ramp-up of production systems.

In the conflict between greater customer requirements and a diversification in production industry, companies are forced to reduce ramp-up times significantly. The trend towards a continuous reduction of the time-to-market puts pressure on these companies and addresses the realisation of the expected market entry. More often this results in an inefficient production run-up, because the reduction in development time poses an important factor for later product changes. With regard to shorter product life cycles, it is expected that time for production and distribution will be extended. Cost-intensive product changes will reduce profit, which is why product change management becomes more and more important. Nevertheless, the effective management of process changes is not addressed sufficiently by today’s research. These in particular can be defined as most critical factors for an efficient production run-up.