Adaptability

Manufacturing flexibility is currently one of the key trends within the automotive industry. In this context, the determination of the optimal degree of flexibility represents a complex decision problem. First of all this article clarifies chances and modes of operation of flexibility in the automotive production. Manufacturing flexibility can be used both to counter short- and medium-term market fluctuations and as a strategic approach to realize long-term costs advantages. Subsequently different aspects which have to be considered within the strategic planning are commented on in detail. The contribution clarifies that the planning of optimal flexibility requires an integrated planning approach.

Changes within organisations and processes define the current processing landscapes of industrial companies. A permanent orientation to competitiveness, the aspiration to effectivity and efficiency as well as the continuous progress in technologies and systems, necessitates an overall coordination of relevant processes. Quite obviously this means today no longer to focus only on production and assembly processes. Only the exact interaction of involved areas - besides production/assembly even areas as logistics, quality and process planning - make a production economically ideal. A leading aircraft-producer realizes significant production-changes by modifying the static (dock-)manufacturing system into a trend-setting flow line-concept.

As the core of the added value the production meets new challenges. Against the background of new trends and changing market mechanism an adjustment of existing production structures is crucial. New sources for earning money can be found in the combination of different leverages which result finally in increasing the economic value added. The objective is to find a combination of above-average performance and cost leadership and to realize these in an integrated production concept. In these redesigned production systems above-average performance is based on the overall connection between methods, people and technologies over the whole supply chain.

In the last years of general economic depression, European small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) have compensated for the large enterprises’ loss in value and job creation. A trend towards a “pulverization” of the economic system from large to small companies could be noticed. On the other hand, growth is an economic prerequisite for sustainable business success. Must a SME therefore grow and become a large enterprise in order to succeed? Not necessarily. Business growth is not a perpetuum mobile; it is restricted by internal diseconomies of scale and scope caused by the increased complexity of large organizations. In this paper, a new approach is presented which shows how small and medium sized companies can realize sustainable growth without losing the advantages of a small organizational structure.

Autonomous control strategies for production logistic processes have already demonstrated their effectiveness on the shop-floor level. This article can be understood as a proof of concept: It is exemplarily shown that a pheromone-based autonomous control strategy can lead to better performance than a central control system when applied to a production network regarding production and transport logistic processes in a holistic way.

Change Management and transformability of factories are usually not planned in an integrated way today. While Change Management focuses solely on the change process itself, this process is mostly ignored in the planning process of a transformable factory. The synthesis of these two approaches allows a holistic support of change processes, in order to promote innovations for example, upgrade employee competencies and use the planned technological, spatial and organisational transformability thoroughly.

Organizational change-processes are usually carried out according to objective criteria; self-organizational aspects (as well as emotions and (basic-) needs as order parameter) are not taken into consideration. However, these aspects eventually decide on the success of innovative processes. Therefore, it is of importance to design organizational innovative processes in such a way that they enable and enhance self-organization. A technique designed to identify order parameters and to enhance self-organizational aspects (using adapted and relevant methods drawn from the field of Industrial Engineering) is introduced and discussed.

Production plant managers try to maximize the machine utilization. In this article it is shown that the operative responsible plant managers should minimize the machine utilization to guarantee minimum cost per unit. Only the sales force has the task to maximize the machine utilization. Operations Management has to organize the production efficiently and has to ensure to meet the customer due dates.

Most enterprises have identified the need for flexibility, but the selection of the right degree of flexibility is a complex task. Sophisticated methods, which consider uncertainties in the valuation model, are time consuming and require a supporting software tool. The existing ones are applicable for very specific planning tasks only. In this paper, a methodology to support the valuation of manufacturing flexibility and PLANTCALC™, a supporting software tool, are presented. Both have been developed in a joint research project of the Institute for Machine Tools and Industrial Management and the Siemens AG.

The intensive international competition exerts strong cost pressure on Germany’s producing companies. Hence, managers more and more decide to relocate industrial locations to foreign countries in order to reduce their costs. However, not all possibilities to strengthen and to sustainably save Germany’s industrial locations have been tapped, yet. One step towards this that is supposed by companies to keep a high potential, is to collaborate. A new approach for the design of collaborations focussing complexity drivers shall raise the probability of success of collaborative goods and services.