Supply Chain Management

The integration of information technologies in the production environment proceeds and is summarized under the term ’Industry 4.0’. As a consequence, new challenges and opportunities transform the risk landscape of supply chains substantially. Acknowledging this, our article outlines the impact of Industry 4.0 and formulates first recommendations for practitioners especially in the field of supply chain risk management.

Supply chain management (SCM) within the researching pharmaceutical industry is characterized by specific requirements: Especially regulations, a high value of the products with corresponding requirements on (anti counterfeit -) security and long cycle times characterize this industry. This article shows which key performance indicators supply chain managers at the biggest researching pharmaceutical companies use currently, how they change in the future and which implications can be derived from that. The findings mainly base on an interview series with 11 of the global TOP20 highest-grossing, researching pharmaceutical companies (ranking according to [1]) as well as a literature analysis and a single case study conducted at one of the companies.

The networking between companies in a supply chain becomes tighter. This applies for manufacturing plants and the supply with manufacturing equipment as well. Hence, the complexity of the flow of information, in particular for tool management, increases. Currently the exchange of information is mostly paper-based and tool data is not available continuously along the supply chain. By using a digital and cloud-based tool management system, breaks in the flow of information along the supply chain for machining tools can be overcome. Herewith tool data can be called and updated ongoing and location-independent. Furthermore, after clearly identifying a tool, required tool data can automatically be transferred into the control system of the machine.

Regarding the concept „Industry 4.0“ some analogies to Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) can be detected. Industry 4.0 is using technical progress in manufacturing as well as in IT while in the CIM frameworks the interdependencies between the business management and the engineering issues are analyzed more in-depth. When designing general or industry-specific Industry 4.0 solutions it is worthwhile to consider insights and experience collected with former CIM projects.

Automation technology moved into factories by the end of last century. Since then, production processes have changed dramatically worldwide. While companies first focused on optimizing interdepartmental collaboration, today the cross-company collaboration increasingly comes into focus. After all, in a globalized economy companies need to operate in networks. In order to cooperate efficiently and effectively in global supply chains, transparent structures and standards are indispensable. This applies first and foremost to the logistics.

That the pace of a rowing boat depends on time conformity of the strokes is common knowledge. Who gets out of step loses performance and does need longer to finish. What applies to a rowing team can be transferred to industrial logistics processes. Synchronised material flows between the different supply chain echelons enable an increase in throughput combined with stable processes. This paper is based on research results on the topic of „Synchronised Logistics Processes“, which have been performed at Munich University of Applied Sciences in the last couple of years. Based on already successfully applied traffic dynamics models, the crucial link between synchronisation, productivity and stability of material flows has been investigated thoroughly.

Nowadays, the production of many goods takes place in distributed facilities within supply chains. The production planning of single facilities is based on due dates for delivery of raw materials or intermediate products that were agreed with supply chain partners. Thus, for an efficient overall system it is of major importance that these due dates are fulfilled. However, production systems are usually subjected to disruptions that put the execution of a given schedule at risk. This paper presents a method for the signal-based detection of faults in production systems. In addition to the fault detection, a heuristic method is employed that mitigates the disruptions and leads to a reliable production.

The complex and dynamic worldwide logistic systems are marked by the heavy dependence between the participants. Through this, local developments (especially in the economic sector) can entail unforeseeable consequences on the entire network. Furthermore, cyclical fluctuations occur at increasingly brief intervals. In times of an inconstant economic situation, the challenge arises to design processes with such flexibility or to construct the entire system in such a way, that unforeseeable market fluctuations can be reacted to in the best possible manner and that the system does not collapse. Only this can ensure the long term international competitiveness.

In the context of risk management the demographic change is reflected in demand and environmental risks. On the one hand, the requirements of products’ target groups are changing. On the other hand, the labour bottleneck is increasing due to the shift in population and age structure. When choosing strategies and measures for dealing with the demographic change in supply chains, companies should consider organizational as well as technological and personnel management-related aspects. In this connection, the integral examination of the complete product line as well as the company’s and the supply chain partners’ development of capabilities are essential.

Lean material supply and provision concepts are crucial to an efficient production system. In the automobile production are common supply concepts: in-sequence material provision (JIS), vehicle specific sets and non-mixed provision. For the provision of sets containing different part clusters efficient picking processes are necessary. Picking is usually carried out in supermarkets close to the assembly line, which are replenished by warehouses. A scientific project of MAN Truck & Bus AG and the Technische Universität München aims at streamlining these processes and proposes to merge warehousing and picking stages. Prerequisite of a broad implementation of those one-stage material provision concepts is a change in the material supply and disposition strategy.