Start-up Management

Interoperable automation can benefit cybersecurity certification processes that result from the EU Cybersecurity Act (e.g. EUCS) so that they represent less overhead for the stakeholders involved. The development of key standardization efforts involving relevant stakeholders (e.g. regulators) is needed to fully realize these benefits. EU projects like H2020 MEDINA, HEU COBALT and communities such as EUROSCAL are well on the way to achieving this goal. However, more practical experience is needed to make continuous certification with automation a reality.

Due to the increasing demand for individuality, producer of capital goods offer a great range of different products. This product portfolio needs to be adjusted due to many reasons. Modifications may just include the ramp-up. However, modifications can also affect the termination of a production which can just contain single parts up to an entire series. This article provides a deeper insight into the phase-out process of multi-variant products of capital goods producers.

Due to a growing amount of complexity and variants as well as shrinking product life cycles industrial companies meet the challenge to handle a high number of production ramp-ups. Within this context, a fast and smooth ramp-up of assembly systems is becoming more and more a critical success factor. This article describes how smart devices combined with a predictive knowledge database can support and speed up the ramp-up of manual assembly systems in capital goods industries.

Quality in the production ramp-up significantly affects the success of new product introductions. At the same time the number of restarts in producing companies grows with more divers and specific customer requirements and less vertical range of onsite manufacturing. The resulting complexity is difficult to manage and often leads to quality issues. This article tackles the problem by focusing on quality aspects of the ramp-up management. Based on a holistic understanding of quality the authors present „PAM“, a model for production ramp-up. PAM structures the highly complex topic of ramp-up management and at the same time represents all relevant interdependent elements. The model provides a basis to systematically improve quality in production ramp-up.

Even during ramp-up phases technical product changes are inevitable. Swift and spontaneous reaction is therefore required for meeting the set market entry date. At the same time, risk estimation of different solution alternatives is needed to evaluate the effects of product changes on product and processes. In this context unstructured procedures observed in practice lead to unsatisfactory solutions and unforeseeable effects. This dilemma of product change management has been countered with the development of PMEA (Product Change Mode and Effect Analysis) and its combination with TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving).

Production Ramp-Ups are crucial for an industrial companies´ success. Business processes have to be controlled throughout the entire Production Network, what could be ensured by the use of modern workflow-based control methods. So far it is still questionable what should be the workflow’s goal. Looking at a ramp-up along the supply chain the process consists of a large number of local ramp-ups. For this a prognosis system will be introduced which allows an educated guess on the development of the number of pieces during the ramp-up. The prognosis is founded on a knowledge-based approach and does rely on multivariate data analysis. This will lead to a ramp-up forecast which could offer strategic aims into workflow-based network control tools.

Nowadays the ramp-up of products is a decisive influence parameter in business competition, therefore it is a crucial component for the competitiveness of a company. Being able to place products on the market in shorter periods of development and at the same time improve quality, while managing constant diversification, is a challenge companies manufacturing series products must face. This paper is a style guide demonstrating actual weak points and problems in product development revealed by a survey and interviews.

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.

Due to shortening product life cycles, complex supplier networks and an increasing number of parties involved, the decision making process has become both more critical and more difficult. The complexity and dynamics of the ramp-up phase make it necessary to not try to concentrate the decisions in on hand, but rather distribute decisions among decentralized yet competent decision makers on-site. It is, however, necessary to provide the decentralized decision makers with the basis and the capability of decision making, and a joint target system to ensure optimal outcome. The paper presents a heuristic approach to design and operate production ramp-up appropriate to stable and efficient ramp-up processes.

The management of production ramp-up of complex series products is one of the critical success factors for companies. Shorter ramp-up phases become more important for companies because an early time-to-market means extra gains right after market launch. Nevertheless, reduction of production ramp-up is mostly realised by time savings in the phase of product development. This is one of the reasons for a lot of product changes, which occur during production ramp-up and whereby original equipment manufacturers as well as suppliers are forced to renew already used series tools. To reduce unnecessary expense of tool replacement a forward displacement and a faster implementation of technical product changes are required. In this context the product change classification offers significant but until today unused potentials.