Manufacturing Systems

The network as a complexity driver gains in importance due to a proceeding globalization. The amount and location of sites are a key part of the network. A growing number of sites raises the complexity causing further coordination efforts, interfaces and opacity. Complexity has not been taken into account within location decisions yet. Thus this article analyses the connection between the amount of sites and complexity.

Current developments of Industry 4.0 offer new possibilities for coordination and coope-ration in production networks. Information technology allows for an ad-hoc documentation and analysis of system states. Hence, manufacturing resources can be offered to other companies in the short term, and coordination, scheduling, and billing can be done quickly. Industry and science now need to find appropriate procedures and practices how to implement and run networks of shared resources.

Volatility in market demand leads to temporary over- and under utilization of productive assets. Heijunka aims at de-coupling the production system from market volatility. The production program is spread as even as possible over time. This achieves high asset utilization, short lead times, and low inventories. There are validated Heijunka methods for the manufacturing industry, but for the process industry this remains a research gap. This article describes the development of a Heijunka model for the process industry in order to close that gap.

It is against the background of Industrie 4.0 that profound knowledge of the principles and basics of manual work or efficient work design, respectively, gains particular importance. It will continue to be a fair and neutral reference basis for the design of productive and ergonomic work in the Smart Factory. By collecting both time-relevant and ergonomically relevant data, MTM-HWD® (Human Work Design) a new MTM (Methods-Time Measurement) building block system offers an unprecedented quality in describing and evaluating human work. It, thus, combines work method-oriented with ergonomic work design.

At present, the industry has to face various challenges due to the needs of customers for individualized products and the related increasing number of product variants. Furthermore, the increasing complexity of the value added process and the demographic change with the related increasing average age of the employees as well as the growing shortage of skilled professionals negatively influence the situation. This article deals with assistance systems as a potential tool to meet these new demands and demonstrates successful implementations of these systems that have been already realized.

The use of cyber-physical systems in production and logistics is an important component of Industry 4.0. The merger of production and logistics systems with information technology facilitates the transition from centralized to decentralized production planning and control. However, the need to equip logistic objects with the necessary technology is associated with high investment costs for production companies. This paper presents a method using dynamic clustering, which is suitable for identifying those parts of the production system, where an investment in technology for autonomous control leads to the largest increase in performance of the overall system.

The human being has the ability to adapt to physical changes in the production and logistic environment. The aim of this research project is to equip series transport vehicle with additional intelligent technique so that the vehicle becomes an automated guided vehicle (AGV) and to reduce the commissioning effort for AGVs. The user can control the AGV by voice and gesture so the AGV can do the work automatically. To realize such an interactive system it is important to develop decentralized controllers for the AGV. Thus, it is possible that the AGV is able to flexibly adapt his own behaviour.

Risks threaten companies in all industries. Especially, if lives are threatened companies have to take measures for risk detection and prevention. The healthcare industry and especially hospitals have to identify risks as early as possible to take measures to protect patients. For this purpose the methods and tools from the lean production system can support hospital employees. Therefore, this paper analyses the support of lean production systems for improving patient safety in hospitals.

In the automotive industry, picking areas - so called supermarkets - are used to supply the production with material. By supplying the material in small quantities and with high frequency supermarkets are an important enabler of just in time production. A new method is presented, which allows a quantitative evaluation of order processing time and physical workload. Using the method, design alternatives as well as existing supermarkets can be assessed quantitatively at a favorable cost-benefit ratio.

Especially manufacturing companies with small-scale structures are increasingly faced with the task to adapt their manufacturing systems on rapidly changing production programs in terms of functional and economic criteria. What is given in large-scale companies as continuous rules by installed comprehensive production systems (CPS), such an improvement is organized highly case-spezific in small-scale companies by the owner. The Ing.-Holzbau Schnoor GmbH &Co KG reacts on described changes by means of an intelligent use of industrial engineering methods: The miniCPS @ Schnoor.