Adaptability

For more than 30 years a thrilling question is how the organization and disturbance management of natural ecological systems can be transferred to man-made systems. Beside approaches of sustainability and changeability especially self-organization approaches are tested in logistic chains and facturies. In this paper three approaches are presented, from which recommendations for the organisation of manufacturing processes can be derived. These thoughts can get new impulses for organization, control and disturbance management from elements of the fourth industrial revolution, especially cyber-physical systems.

The increasing complexity in manufacturing companies’ business environment requires the fast response to changes with little effort. The article focuses the design and implementation of a changeable and versatile production system that transfers the well-proven tact-oriented principle to the whole order management process. The realization is illustrated by practical examples.

The amount of resource efforts prevails with 46 % all other cost factors within classic manufacturing structures. Focusing on energy and labor costs as a source of raising companies profit seems no longer useful. Today, material costs of the manufacturing industry are about 500 billion euro per year, connected with a saving potential about approx. 100 billion euro. Also the belonging for sustainably produced products is still raising and is becoming a factor for a guaranteed purchase. Small and medium-sized enterprises fitted attempt, which helps increasing the transparency of internal processes and allows a resource driven ecological and economical assessment, is the main subject of this article.

In general, rental articles circulate in closed logistic systems, where the order parameters determine the material flow. As the planning horizon often comprises several subsequent orders at different locations, the corresponding transport and route planning is a complex task. Additionally, dynamic effects, such as thefts, damages, rush orders as well as new orders or order changes complicate the proceeding. This paper introduces the concept of an autonomously controlled route planning for rental articles that bases on the Distributed Logistics Routing Protocol (DLRP). At this, an example from the field of event logistics illustrates the concept.

The disposition and control of orders in the field of event logistics constitutes a complex and dynamic challenge. Changing venues, temporal restrictions as well as order changes and high customer demands require a flexible planning of the related logistic processes. Methods from the field of autonomous control offer a promising approach to cope with these problems. This contribution deals with the design of a special module for the information acquisition within the related logistic processes, as the provision of actual planning data is an indispensable prerequisite for the application of autonomous control.

Customers, society and politics challenge companies to ensure the sustainability of their value creation. Many stakeholder groups have an eye on the logistics. These groups constantly raise new requirements and regulations affecting companies’ businesses.  This is the reason why it is not sufficient anymore to react on changing requirements. Companies can gain competitive advantages if they anticipate trends in sustainability and react immediately. In this context, this article presents an approach for trend monitoring and a change agent suppor-ting to react effectively and efficiently on trends in sustainability.

The steadily alternating requirements for industrial companies implicate the challenge to enhance production systems. In such a turbulent as well as dynamic environment, companies must be enabled to act and react quickly. Therefore they have to be equipped with appropriate technologically and organizationally realizable as well as economically rentable options. Within this paper, a methodical approach for a systematic and individual configuration of production systems is presented in order to solve the depicted problems.

The term adaptability is examined from different point of views in modern research. At the same time it can be noticed that adaptability is a more and more important key feature for companies, because of the fact that the ability to adapt is connected to the future development and positioning of a company. Consequently the reaction to a changing environment is an important aspect for companies to act successfully on a long-term basis. To ensure this long-term orientation a company has to analyze a large number of information. The Controlling body of a company plays a central role in getting and analyzing these information. It has also the general competence to retain, select and provide the available information of a company. First empirical surveys show how the controlling can be engaged to recognize and assess requirements of adaptability as early as possible.

The competitiveness of manufacturing companies producing in high-wage countries is strongly depending on labour productivity. In the course of Germany’s demographic change, companies with manual production need to compare the heterogeneous impact factors on labour productivity to develop goal-oriented measures for productivity improvements. The integral productivity analysis enables the user to identify the various impacts on labour productivity and to prioritise fields for process optimisation. The approach is based on the state-oriented modelling of worker activities.

The primary user-model of enterprise systems is expert-based. It depends on the assumption, that the user has expert knowledge about technical terminology and system functions. This model also assume that developer and user has the same degree of knowledge. This statement cannot be accepted. In the future it is more or less necessary that not-skilled workers are familiar with enterprise systems. For this purpose, the center of enterprise research developed a concept for an enterprise system assistant system. It allows the usage of complex enterprise systems also for less trained users.