Profitability

Against the background of constant technological progress in industrial manufacturing plants capital intensive investments have to be made in increasingly shorter time intervals. Due to budget limitations a selection process has to be started. At the end of that process there has to be taken a decision for those investments that offer the biggest added value for the company. For that purpose there are investment evaluation methods, which allow the evaluation of investment objects and the comparison of alternative investments. Based on these methods a methodology was developed, which is able to guide the user in a structured way through the particular steps of the investment evaluation process.

A sustainable constitution of our way of living is more and more subject to the discussion in society and politics. The transportation sector, causing a considerable percentage of the worldwide CO2 emissions, resides right in the middle of the debate. As a result companies find themselves in an area of conflict between economical and ecological objectives, which cannot always be reconciled. Approaches to solve this dilemma are discussed under the general term „Green Logistics“. The implementation of an intelligent cargo system can contribute to bring these approaches to practice.

Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) is the overall integration of knowledge, rules and process operation in the engineering process. It helps implanting the interdisciplinary know-how in product- and process development. The resulting effects are mainly time- and cost-cutting, which can be assigned as relevant competitive advantages against competitors. The importance of this field of study for industries like the automotive, ship-building, process engineering, plant manufacturing and machine-building industry was the significant reason for starting this research. At the very beginning, the focus was on the identification of certain descriptors through analyzing almost 100 scientific articles, books and dissertations about KBE. On the one hand this approach gives a deeper look into the state of the art and on the other hand it provides the possibility of ordering these articles in a certain hierarchy of relevance. The frequencies of indications of the given descriptors within the ...

Excessive or inefficient inventory management leads to tied-up capital which reduces a firm’s liquid assets. Days Inventory Outstanding (DIO) - measuring the duration of capital being tied-up in inventory - remained almost unchanged during the past decade. Results of our study indicate that firms where supply chain management is represented in the top management achieve on average a DIO reduction of 4.5 days compared to other firms in the same industry. This amounts to a cash release of 92.7 million US-Dollars which equals 8.7 % of the firms’ inventory and 1 % of the firms’ turnover. Furthermore, it helps firms to outperform their peers in average by a five percentage points higher Return on Capital Employed (ROCE).

The increasing demand for collaborative value chains challenges the IT. Both the integration of a heterogeneous and complex process and IT-landscape in a short time and the flexible support of new requirements from the business have to be assured. The dynamism of cooperation makes an exact planning of implementation and IT-costs exceedingly difficult. Therefore, the article shows a method that allows a systematic and structured planning and design of the IT in value-added networks.

In light of the current trend towards higher customer demands on logistics performance on the one hand and reduction of internal logistics cost on the other, key performance indicators (KPIs) gain importance. This article provides managers by means of a concise model with sound grasp of the interdependencies between logistics factors and its time-wise interactions. Concrete management measures are being derived from the model in order to improve KPIs sustainably. As a matter of fact, the model highlights the key role of program planning for the management of logistics performance.

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, 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.

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) ...

Production systems require a continuous development to contribute to the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. Therefore, the audit of production systems enables the determination of the current maturity level of production. This allows for the identification of deficits and the definition of starting points for a sustainable optimization of the production. This article focuses on the development of a maturity level based self-assessment concept for the evaluation of the sustainability of production systems.