forecast

The future of the German manufacturing sector and its seminal industry sectors is a matter of the corporate research project between McKinsey & Company and the Department for production management, technology and machine tools (PTW) at the TU Darmstadt. An innovative approach on segmenting different types of production within the manufacturing sector offers a differentiated view on the German production structure. A comparison with other European industrial nations offers the classification of the German manufacturing sector within an international context. Based on a status-quo scenario and with corresponding improvement methods for the production it is possible to set up a future scenario for strengthening the production in Germany.

Due to shortening product life cycles and to the continuous enlargement of product ranges the ramp-up of production systems has become a significant criterion for innovation dynamics of producing companies. Besides the in-creasing technical complexity, a growing number of different parties are involved with different targets and interests. The result is a rising number of possible disturbances for the ramp-up process. In order to better control and shorten ramp-up projects, methods and tools have to be developed to manage the project along the complete value chain. The article gives an outlook on the ramp-up of the future by describing an approach that is the basis for a research project supported by the German ministry of research and education.