Abstract
Keywords - Production monitoring, production control, information technology, software agents, digital factory
Abstract - In todays automotive plants we find heterogeneous software systems for different types of tasks either for planning and the manufacturing operations. IT-systems used for factory planning are summarized as digital factory tools. On the operating level software systems are not yet integrated and thus they support separate tasks such as production order control, production monitoring, sequence planning, vehicle identification, quality management, maintenance management, material control and others.
Due to the fact that the work share between OEMs and suppliers has moved for the benefit of the suppliers the OEMs have to focus more on logistics and supply chain management, even on the shop floor level. Today the staff on the shop floor level works with production monitoring tools that support manufacturing decisions only based on production quantities. In case of a facility breakdown or quality inspection results they only know that a certain number of vehicles is affected but neither the customer orders related to these vehicles nor their options, e.g. color, right hand-/left hand drive, sun roof, etc. It would be a great step forward for better and more transparent decisions if the shop floor people could take their decisions based on identified vehicles/customer orders rather than on undefined production quantities.
This means that in the years to come the above mentioned systems for production monitoring, maintenance management and logistics control will have to be integrated to allow better and more transparent decisions and to recognize the impacts from decisions on the shop floor e.g. on just-in-sequence parts to be provided to the line. Another driver for new software technologies is the increasing number of vehicle models combined with their shorter life cycles. IT-systems must be more flexible concerning changes and adaptations to the new models requirements.
In his paper the author describes a new approach to integrating the existing IT-systems for the benefit of the user on the shopfloor level.