Adaptability

Several internal and external factors influence the performance of manufacturing systems. They increase the requirements for the logistic system’s flexibility, robustness and adaptability. Changeable manufacturing and autonomous control of logistic processes are capable to cope with the complexity and dynamic induced by these factors. Using a case study of an apparel manufacturing company, this article explains how autonomous control can be used to enable changeable manufacturing. It describes five enablers for changeability for the control system solution presented in the case study.

For the design of an agile production system in addition to the holistic view of production and its internal and external links, a detailed analysis of individual components is necessary. These elements are general manufacturing equipment in various types of expression. To investigate and valuate the properties of these components primarily key figures and indicators are used. In the field of facility and maintenance management the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) parameter is widely used to determine the equipment efficiency. This indicator is an integral part of a holistic maintenance management. Recent developments use the OEE value as a basis to evaluate the whole value chain to get a holistic view of the included equipment. This integrated approach is an essential component for assessing the flexibility of production systems, which presents itself in three different dimensions.

Nowadays, the economic determining factors are volatile and change dynamically leading to high uncertainty and risk for supply chain partners. Increased supply chain flexibility is not only considered as a success factor but is also essential for companies to remain competitive. The present article is based on selected results from expert interviews, a focus group as well as a survey analysing the status quo concerning supply chain risk management and the importance of flexibility. Afterwards, a process model is presented which consists of an approach to deduct strategies and measures in order to adjust supply chain flexibility in a structured way. The approach can be implemented for risk mitigation in practice.

Nowadays, companies are facing a rapidly changing environment. New products have to be integrated into established manufacturing processes at ever shorter intervals. To assure competitiveness the design of changeable production systems gains more and more importance. Therefore, a control loop of changeability has been developed within the research project “change-supporting process architectures”. The control loop empowers companies to identify urgent changeability needs with an evaluation method and helps them to design and use change-supporting process architectures with economical solutions. The presented article focuses on the methodology for the evaluation of changeability.

Companies are constantly exposed to radical change. One approach to addressing these challenges is changeable production systems. Changeable production systems can only be as adaptable as the human being who is working in them. An integrated view of the dimensions of human beings, technology and organization is essential in this context. The Institute of Industrial Management and Factory Systems has wide experience and competences in the field of research of adaptable production. This is supported by the lab area of the IBF, called IBF-Lab, which allows interdisciplinary research. Practical application is demonstrated using an example of a research project.

Against the background of today’s highly competitive and dynamic market environment, the concept of changeability of producing gets increasingly important for producing companies in order to maintain or even enhance their survivability. The necessity for change in a production system is determined by the time-dependent complexity of the production tasks which change dynamically with the system’s environment. Most research in this area focuses on the approach to achieve a better changeability by the production system’s design. This paper puts another viewpoint on changeability: best way to achieve an enhanced and sustainable survivability of a production system can be achieved by an early and focused determination of the right time and amplitude of change.

In turbulent and innovative markets it is important for any production enterprise to have a high level of robustness within a specific range of output quantities vis-à-vis any changes it will be affected by. In fact, it is necessary to provide a planning routine for the adaptability of production systems as early as during the planning stage. In this way it will be able to respond to unforeseeable developments. Due to the demographic development in particular, it is no longer appropriate to consider the staff structure after the configuration of the machinery equipment has been planned. It is much more important to design manufacturing systems to be productive during the whole usage phase of the production system without a change of the permanent staff. The aim is to enhance the planning task in such a way that the production system can be adapted technically and organisationally as well as in a personnel-oriented manner to a changing performance of an ageing workforce.

Although all approaches to proactive change management of production systems emphasize the relevance of complexity, an integrated building block “management of complexity” is not available. Based on a specification of the domains and dimensions of production complexity a framework for handling complexity is outlined. It covers guidelines, principles and tools for coping with the multiplicity, diversity, ambiguity and dynamics of production systems.

Due to the concentration of core competences and the utilisation of international location advantages successful German production companies face a situation with globally dispersed sites in global value added networks. The ongoing globalisation, which includes the integration of external sites, suppliers and partners, leads to complex interactions within networks. However, these interactions are not or are simply partially known and not predictable so far. Being able to control dramatic dynamics in the behaviour of global value added networks, German production companies will be positively affected by globalisation in the future. Therefore, changeable global value added networks which can be quickly adjusted to dynamics become crucial. The paper on hand describes an approach for the planning and optimization of adaptable global value added networks. Background is the approach of the research project “planning and optimization of changeable global value added networks” (POWer.net) ...

This paper describes a process oriented method for the planning of versatile production as well as logistics systems. The authors demonstrate how the necessary structures, resources and management capacities can be calculated by using a simple six step planning procedure. Due to the numerous potential applications, the holistic approach as well as the relatively basic design it is possible to file planning results sorted. In doing so, factory designers can compare them easily with new challenges emerging. In combination with permanently available simulation models the process oriented planning procedure is a significant step towards permanent planning disposition.