production system

The increasing complexity in manufacturing companies’ business environment requires the fast response to changes with little effort. The article focuses the design and implementation of a changeable and versatile production system that transfers the well-proven tact-oriented principle to the whole order management process. The realization is illustrated by practical examples.

The steadily alternating requirements for industrial companies implicate the challenge to enhance production systems. In such a turbulent as well as dynamic environment, companies must be enabled to act and react quickly. Therefore they have to be equipped with appropriate technologically and organizationally realizable as well as economically rentable options. Within this paper, a methodical approach for a systematic and individual configuration of production systems is presented in order to solve the depicted problems.

For a sustained improvement in the logistic goals, such as the punctuality of delivery or cycle time, a consistent, process-oriented design, planning and execution of production systems is required. Besides the development of new methods, support by appropriate IT systems is necessary. Especially for SMEs, there are no solutions in this regard. Thereby first of all the existing MRP systems remain in the old thought patterns, to control and regulate the complexity of the real world through a detailed illustration as a model. For the development of a new ppc system the customer needs were determined apart from solutions of existing systems. The article shows the “real” needs in the environment of the factory structure design and production planning and control of SMEs by using innovation management according to Design for Six Sigma+Lean (DFSS+Lean).

Due to an increasing cost pressure especially big companies decided in recent years to implement a lean production system. However, the majority does not meet their expectations regarding the overall performance. An actual study confirms the companies´ dissatisfaction. There is a lack of structured and systematic approaches for lean production. Especially small and midsized companies ask for a systematic description for the concept in order to understand the context and to get a guideline for the implementation.

Many companies have difficulties in generating sustainable success through the introduction of a production system, especially because of the systemic and cultural change process. During his time as head coach Klinsmann changed the DFB from old structures to a modern system and initiated a sustainable development. By comparing the Klinsmann Project with the findings of a benchmarking survey about the successful introduction of production systems conducted by the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering of RWTH Aachen University, clear parallels can be pointed out and hence control levers for a successful change can be identified.

Internal and external influences of change plus the steady examination with continuous as well as discontinuous change constitute a great challenge for industrial companies to be mastered. The improvement of production systems towards variable and unpredictable requirements caused by a variety of company-specific impacts will be increasingly focused. In this article a concept will be introduced which helps to identify and analyze company-specific change factors systematically.

Production systems require a continuous development to contribute to the competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. Therefore, the audit of production systems enables the determination of the current maturity level of production. This allows for the identification of deficits and the definition of starting points for a sustainable optimization of the production. This article focuses on the development of a maturity level based self-assessment concept for the evaluation of the sustainability of production systems.

For the design of an agile production system in addition to the holistic view of production and its internal and external links, a detailed analysis of individual components is necessary. These elements are general manufacturing equipment in various types of expression. To investigate and valuate the properties of these components primarily key figures and indicators are used. In the field of facility and maintenance management the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) parameter is widely used to determine the equipment efficiency. This indicator is an integral part of a holistic maintenance management. Recent developments use the OEE value as a basis to evaluate the whole value chain to get a holistic view of the included equipment. This integrated approach is an essential component for assessing the flexibility of production systems, which presents itself in three different dimensions.

Nowadays, companies are facing a rapidly changing environment. New products have to be integrated into established manufacturing processes at ever shorter intervals. To assure competitiveness the design of changeable production systems gains more and more importance. Therefore, a control loop of changeability has been developed within the research project “change-supporting process architectures”. The control loop empowers companies to identify urgent changeability needs with an evaluation method and helps them to design and use change-supporting process architectures with economical solutions. The presented article focuses on the methodology for the evaluation of changeability.