Abstract
On the commercial vehicle market, customers ask for lower amounts of components than on the passenger vehicle market. In addition, manufacturers have to supply very small numbers of lots for the after-market. Since the lifetime of a commercial vehicle lasts a least 30 years, the production of spare parts with lot size 1 must be guaranteed for a long period of time. Consistent with the trend in the automotive industry, OEMs of commercial vehicles are releasing new models designed to meet special customer needs at an ever more rapid pace. The customer and vehicle-related variety of supplier components is thus increasing rapidly.
System suppliers need to respond to these trends by following new production philosophies if they want to remain competitive, flexible and cost-effective and if they want to ensure short lead times in the future.
Based on an example of a system supplier of brake components, the authors describe how highly-flexible production facilities were established in an Eastern European environment. By building the new plant for approx. 1,000 people the supplier managed to fully meet his customers¡¦ requirements.
The technical paper is divided into three main sections:
hnFirst of all, the authors describe the reasons and motivation why suppliers transfer specific production tasks to Eastern Europe.
hnThe second section deals with production and logistic-oriented issues such as demand-flow technology, KANBAN control on the shopfloor and factory and shopfloor layout principles. These principles will be the most challenging issues for automotive suppliers in the years to come. Suppliers will have to respond to trends such as BMW¡¦s KOVP project, the benefits of which include high flexibility with respect to changes in customer orders up to six days before the end of assembly of any BMW car. In other words, customers may change their orders up to six days before their car is built. The suppliers will need systems and organizational structures to make this kind of flexibility become reality.
hnThirdly, the authors describe how the plant was planned and realized and how western know-how and state-of-theart standards were implemented.
The building concept concerning temporary structures and flexibility to allow for changes in manufacturing demands are illustrated.