ramp-up management

Due to a growing amount of complexity and variants as well as shrinking product life cycles industrial companies meet the challenge to handle a high number of production ramp-ups. Within this context, a fast and smooth ramp-up of assembly systems is becoming more and more a critical success factor. This article describes how smart devices combined with a predictive knowledge database can support and speed up the ramp-up of manual assembly systems in capital goods industries.

The problems occurring during ramp-up processes of new products are usually of technical nature. They, however, feature a large-scale potential for causing or intensifying further problems in other fields of action during the project. Especially small and medium-sized companies suffer from the absence of appropriate documentation methods and proactive approaches for effective containment actions in case of conflicts. Looking at a ramp-up along the supply chain the process consists of a large number of local ramp-ups. Conventional project management methods do not offer suitable tools for this multi-level problem. A holistic ramp-up management needs to be developed.

An increasing customer-driven rate of individualisation as well as the lack of brand loyalty is leading to a greater competition within the automotive industry. Project organisations integrate innovations and technologies into the product under enormous permanent pressure. Especially the defined targets concerning time-to-market, costs, and quality set new challenges to the project management throughout the often decentralised innovation network of engineering partners and manufacturers.

The fact that the ramp-up phase is a highly critical and economically important stadium within the product lifecycle for both suppliers and OEMs implies that an efficient product change management is applied to meet the goals of cost, quality, and time. This article introduces a combined management concept called hybrid product change management. By recombining existing management solutions, such as the standard processes matching certain product change types and the product change processes based on process elements, enterprise networks are enabled to coordinate all product change projects. This aspect is described further by giving an idea of how this hybrid product change management can be supported in terms of information and communication technology and knowledge management.

Due to accelerating innovation processes, shorter product life cycles, and a broader range of products the ramp-up management in the automotive industry has become more and more important over the last years. Within this process the launch support process has to ensure the meeting of the quality expectations of the costumers right from the start. The article discusses the requirements of an efficient product launch process, stressing the importance of fast and sustainable knowledge management.

For successful new product introductions in a highly competitive market the performance of future production ramp-ups has to be increased. Solving emerging problems efficiently is a necessity for the reduction of total costs and time of the manufacturing start-up period. A specific risk management allows the measurement of potential problems arising in the ramp-up process. Based on this knowledge, it is determined in which specific area a detailed scenario planning promises higher gains than efforts.