function

„Lean Production“ is a known as successful production concept increasing productivity of a company in the long-term. Implementing lean principles in production can be challenging for the organizational structure of a company. Insufficient holistic process models, missing interface definitions and inflexible management structures can be major limitations. This article analyses - with the example of a Swiss production site of a company in the medical engineering sector - the challenges for the organization associated with the implementation of lean principles in operations. Requirements for an adapted organizational structure are highlighted and alternative organizational structures outlined. Advantages and disadvantages of these alternatives are presented and a solution for the case-study example developed. Companies in a similar environment can get suggestions for the adaption of their own organizational structure when implementing lean management principles in their production.

Nanotechnology offers great potentials for improved product properties and innovative functionalities which have to be considered in the product development in an early stage and compared with product requirements. In practice, a gap is to be recognised between nanotechnology and product development. An approach to close the gap and to improve the interoperability is to define a common language based on a functional-based view. The formalisation and mapping of the functions uses semantic nets and ontologies in order to allow a dynamic expanding and machine readability. Thus, applications and nanotechnology will be linked with the objective of generation new product ideas by nanotechnology.