flexibility

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.

There is hardly a company that would not claim to be very flexible. Being flexible has become essential in today’s business world. It is a common misconception to consider high flexibility as the ability to compensate for weaknesses in processes or their design. On the other hand it is associated with the readiness or acceptance of the staff to cushion surges in needed capacity without additional expenses being incurred whatever induced the fluctuations. In times of market depression as we see today the narrow limits become blatantly apparent in the light of the current redundancy trend. If flexibility to such an extent is an important characteristic of manufacturers how and where can we see it? Proper process design which orients itself by the principles of simplicity and clarity is the core of highly flexible manufacturing systems. In conclusion by examining manufacturing processes of a low volume production the necessary prerequisites, the potential gains as well as limitations to ...

Beginning with planning and control of traditional manufacturing systems and covering new goals of manufacturing strategy requirements like complexity management, adaptability and robustness are articulated. The paradigms of bionic, holonic and fractal systems seem to fulfill these requirements and allow the creation of new production systems.

In this article an approach for capacity planning and control in highly volatile markets is presented. The main steps in cutting capacity cost are: • Ensure highly aggregated capacity groups • To maximize the customer oriented work ahead window by applying the customer order characteristic • To determin the long term capacity plan with few capacity levels • To apply a short term capacity adjustment tool with corrected due dates according the customer order characteristic

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.

European companies which are producing on customers demand, have to face a highly turbulent competitive environment. The main challenges are short production cycles, high customer requirements, globalisation as well as competitors from developing countries. A solution to the resulting high dynamic and complexity are cooperative management approaches like supply chain management and the set up of specific flexibility potentials.