Autor: Tobias Teich

In their role as a supplier small and medium sized Enterprises are often in dependence of large-scale enterprises. Rising international competition increases that pressure on SMEs. To react fast and flexible to customer wishes but also keeping high quality standards by saving costs, is enormously important for such enterprises. Especially at single or small-scale production the automated production planning is a big challenge. This article shows a possible solution to that problem in form of an automated and integrated production planning. In particular the article illustrates the generation of process alternatives within the solution by using Ant Colony Optimization.

The processes for the procurement of individual components are coined by a high grade of complexity. The reason is that an individual component often cannot be identified by a unique item number. In point of fact an additional detailed description for each individual part is necessary. As a rule the needed descriptions cannot be created in an ERP system directly which causes an additional effort concerning the distribution of the individualization information to all suppliers that are involved in the manufacturing process. The following article shows how the distribution can be configured in an effective and transparent way within a supplier network.

More than ever individualized products which come up to the exact customer wishes are in great demand. This statement also applies to the automobile market especially to vehicles of the upper class. Because the manufacturer offer a great supply of individual packages nearly every customer wish can be realized. If you look at this development from a company’s disposition point of view you notice that the biggest problem is the management of the variety of variants which partly go almost ad infinitum. In the following an approach should be shown for the reduction or rather the complete avoidance of the complexity through the use of a special product configuration system which is decoupled from the actual product model.

The requirements to enterprises in-creased and became more complex over the last years. This is caused by changing market demands - chief the change to customer orientation - and the resulting necessary changes. For these reasons the research on the area of value adding in networks grew in their significance. This paper presents an operating model for non-hierarchical production networks between small and medium enterprises and -units developed by the Chemnitz University of Technology. The selection of the necessary network participants is the central task of this model.