start of production

Nowadays the ramp-up of products is a decisive influence parameter in business competition, therefore it is a crucial component for the competitiveness of a company. Being able to place products on the market in shorter periods of development and at the same time improve quality, while managing constant diversification, is a challenge companies manufacturing series products must face. This paper is a style guide demonstrating actual weak points and problems in product development revealed by a survey and interviews.

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.

Facing shorter product life cycles and ever changing customer requirements, production ramp-up processes are becoming one of the most decisive factors to stay in the market. In contrast to the automotive industry, where large scale information systems (IS) and simulation tools allow the build up of digital factories, small and medium sized enterprises (SME) lack resources to satisfy the corresponding organisational and IS-specific requirements. The focus of the research project ELAN is to develop an overall approach to manage production ramp-up adapted to the needs of SME.