More Reliable Planning for Individual Production

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Companies that produce customised products for their customers can often plan their production only to a limited extent as these companies often lack accurate information about the expected processing time. As part of the PARSyP (Predictive Analytics for Robust Synchronised Production) research project, Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT from Aachen, Germany, and three industrial partners are therefore jointly developing a software tool that allows synchronised production planning for make-to-order manufacturers. The project partners will augment the existing software solution synchroTecS from innoTecS with a new algorithm that also includes time uncertainties and probabilities in operations planning. This will therefore allow planning reliability to be predicted far more precisely based on the available production data. The software can also recommend detailed operational plans to the customer. Machine utilisation, throughput times and delivery times could therefore be planned more reliably.

Tool making, in particular, is characterised by individual products that are produced exactly in accordance with the customer requirements. For such made-to-order products, the employees have to invest considerable time in planning, and throughput and turnaround times are lengthy. Individual processes have to be better coordinated in order to improve the transparency of the individual production processes and the productivity. Some companies are already in the process of transferring suitable principles of serial production to individual production, for example, by defining material flows and bundling them on so-called cycle pallets. The redeveloped software should now support the process planner even more with the task of bundling the orders logistically, and introducing a production-wide cycle. 

The project partners will first test the software on tool making for injection moulding and forming. Later, the tool is also to be adapted to other applications in detailed operations planning for individual production. Interested companies that wish to be involved already in the development of the software can still participate as partners in the project.