Production Planning

In today’s production systems the functions of production planning and control (PPC) have a significant impact on an efficient performance of production processes. The decisive interface between the prognosis based planning and its operative realization can be seen in the exchange of plan data and production feedback data. It is to be expected that developments in the context of Industrie 4.0 lead to an increase in data quality and actuality. Based on these improvements improved production planning results can be achieved. In the present paper the main functions of production planning will be discussed in detail and their development potential with regard to Industrie 4.0 will be pointed out.

Nowadays, a well-designed capacity supply is essential for a company’s competitiveness. In this situation, a flexible and efficient capacity control is among the most important measures. In this paper, we presented the potential of reconfigurable machine tools. Based on this, we described the concept of the throughput time harmonizing capacity control. Moreover, we evaluated the theoretical potential of this capacity control approach in a simulation experiment. In further steps, we will analyze the total potential in different simulation studies.

Regarding the concept „Industry 4.0“ some analogies to Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) can be detected. Industry 4.0 is using technical progress in manufacturing as well as in IT while in the CIM frameworks the interdependencies between the business management and the engineering issues are analyzed more in-depth. When designing general or industry-specific Industry 4.0 solutions it is worthwhile to consider insights and experience collected with former CIM projects.

Nowadays, the production of many goods takes place in distributed facilities within supply chains. The production planning of single facilities is based on due dates for delivery of raw materials or intermediate products that were agreed with supply chain partners. Thus, for an efficient overall system it is of major importance that these due dates are fulfilled. However, production systems are usually subjected to disruptions that put the execution of a given schedule at risk. This paper presents a method for the signal-based detection of faults in production systems. In addition to the fault detection, a heuristic method is employed that mitigates the disruptions and leads to a reliable production.

Ensuring healthy, safe and competitive work is a major challenge in industrial production particularly regarding the demographic change in Germany. Especially work systems with a high amount of manual tasks require appropriate solutions. The article discusses the potential of hybrid human-robot work systems in manufacturing focusing assembly tasks.

Customer demand for products and demand for materials to ensure material availability is often forecasted. The results are often used in the operative production planning and control. Exponential smoothing methods are widely used for this forecasting. To ensure high forecasting quality over time, the smoothing parameter has to be adapted over time. An automation is suggested and analyzed.

The day-to-day business of the forging industry is characterized by fluctuating order quantities and production of numerous variants. Within the framework of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 489 “Process chain for the manufacturing of precision forged high performance components” a simulation based approach was developed for the implementation of operative tool management to evaluate new technological and organizational measures for enhancing the tool life of tools used for precision forging.

Lot sizing is a substantial factor of economic production. There are various lot sizing approaches considering the same cost factors in different ways. Their results are usually quite similar. A common weakness of all lot sizing approaches is the limited consideration of relevant cost factors. The costs which are neglected usually rise with increasing lot sizes. This leads to illusory exact results because too large lots are calculated generally. This paper compares functions and results of different lot sizing approaches and discusses neglected cost factors.

The European automotive industry can be characterized by its multi-variant products resulting in complex production planning problems. Often separate systems are used to plan personnel capacity and production programmes. Usually human-resource allocation planning is done very inefficiently and independently from actual capacity requirements. This causes imbalances in the form of idle workers or overloaded workstations. This paper describes an approach for the integration of human resource allocation and production planning into one common planning platform in order to utilise existing optimisation potential. It will further describe the impact of the solution on flexibility and mutability of assembly lines.

In an increasingly turbulent environment, today enterprises are confronted with the challenge of aligning available capacities with the capacities required using targeted measures. An approach is presented to support the selection of measures quantitatively.