market orientation

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.

These days most companies operate in buyer‘s markets, where a strong focus on customer requirements is a main driver for competitive advantage and sustainable profits. Key issue in this context is the integration of the customer view into technology development without setting narrow boundaries for the potential technological solution space. Product development activities often concentrate on the definition of requirements for specific components at an early stage. This article shows an approach, where the customer view is translated via product functions into technical specifications. Thus technology development has a much broader potential solution space compared to an early focussing on specific components.