Adaptability

The purpose of this paper is to show how corporate strategy can be aligned with the production system of an enterprise to derive an operations strategy. Consequently, the operations strategy is employed to define prospective needs of agility. The research methodology builds upon action research that is realized in a long-term approach with two joint manufacturing companies. Both can be classified as small and medium sized enterprises (SME). The preliminary findings underline the importance of a holistic view towards agility emphasizing organization and people as major drivers of agility. These drivers are addressed by means of a playful intervention with LEGO-bricks.

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.

The trend for product individualization results in a demand for small and more flexible production series with a considerable diversity of components. The improvement of manufacturing and assembly flexibility has a direct impact on the control complexity of the manufacturing tasks leading to big challenges for the quality assurance systems. The quality assurance strategy that is nowadays used for mass production is unable to cope with the inspection flexibility needed among small series production. The major challenge faced by a quality assurance system applied to small series production is to guarantee the needed quality level already at the first run (“first time right on time”). This demands a constant adaption of the quality assurance system behavior according to the dynamic manufacturing conditions, which can be achieved by the improvement of cognitive and autonomy aspects of the manufacturing systems. This work introduces the concept of Cognitive Production Metrology as an ...

The migration of production sites out of Europe is primarily based on manufacturing costs. Therefore, perfectly functioning communication systems and reliable logistic services are needed. Although the advantage of lower labor costs will decrease in the future, more low-wage countries will be discovered. The answer cannot be found in low-cost production but in an approach which optimizes processes in a holistic way avoiding waste through intelligent solutions.

A research project sponsored by Germany‘s Ministry of Economics and Technology is concerned with how modern Internet technologies can enable more efficient use of machinery in road and civil engineering. The idea of the AutoBauLog project - Autonomous Control in Construction Site Logistics - is to integrate all planning and construction processes of a civil engineering project from start to finish. It is based on a five-dimensional construction model that combines 3D geometry data, time and cost information. This technology is to keep project accountants and controllers up-to-date on changes on a construction site and on the impact of these changes on the cost and time schedule. Problems can thus be actively and promptly tackled before they influence the overall process.

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.

The traditional approach of transport logistic challenges is based on a central and static viewpoint. A given scenario is tried to be solved in an optimal way. Examples of established and well investigated scenarios in this area are the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) and the Pickup and Delivery Problem (PDP). The algorithms for these traditional points of view are pushed to their limits when applied on dynamically changing and close to reality scenarios. By contrast, the introduced autonomous control concept Distributed Logistics Routing Protocol (DLRP) was developed to act within a dynamic environment and to enable logistic objects to make own decisions. A comparison of the DLRP and a traditional algorithm will be presented as an evaluation study of the autonomous control concept.

The devastating economical crisis and the rise of economy in 2010 showed that companies nowadays act in a turbulent environment. Internal and external factors like customer demand change in a very dynamic way. The research and development project ProAktiW is funded by the BMBF. Results of the project will show that an increase of changeability induces the sustainable and economical production in Germany. This article shows first results of the recently started project.

This article deals with flexibility of production and distribution processes within global production networks. It introduces the concept of autonomous products, classifies different types of flexibility and develops according object models. The decision alternatives resulting from the increased flexibility are modelled as a mathematical function. Different decision methods are proposed for decision rendering and selecting between these alternatives. Exemplary applications in some scenarios are proposed.