key success factors

The quality endeavors of an organization, like other enterprise activities, must be oriented towards the economic principles. This approach give way to many organization to question the extent to which the quality management contributes for the overall business success and to pin point the areas where particularly a high value can be created in order to attain the maximum possible economic benefits out of QM-Systems. Without including the answer of this question in the decision making process, the resources can not be allocated optimally for the quality purpose. The following illustration depicts how the quality-based activities generate the value to enhance the performance and a variety of indicators reflects how they indirectly add value to an organization and hence contribute to its economic success.

“The Digital Factory is no longer a vision, but on the way to reality“, Volkswagen reported on the branch meeting in Ludwigsburg in June 2004. This quote reflects the situation of the Digital Factory in automotive industry in an impressing way. Other branches and enterprise sizes still have to accomplish this step, as an actual study of Fraunhofer IPA shows. Here the question arises how enterprises handle the subject “Introduction of the Digital Factory”. To say it directly - there is no general approach. Depending on the structure of customers and suppliers, the size of enterprise and on the product, individual approaches have to be found and implemented. But what can be pointed out independent of the specific enterprise are the success factors for the introduction of the Digital Factory. This subject is dealt with in the article at hand.