2.5 Summary
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A company’s production process determines how technology resources and employees are organised to process raw materials into a desired production state. To do this as sensibly as possible, one deals with work and process planning on the one hand and resource planning on the other.
Work and process planning is about the design, documentation, control and improvement of a production process, i.e. the extent to which personnel, material, equipment and operating facilities can be used as productively as possible to achieve the corporate goal. The four criteria of uniformity, sequence, target definition and interdepartmental thinking help in this.
Depending on the area of application and the problem, there are different planning strategies, for example, in which order and according to which prioritisation orders are to be processed. Work and process planning also deals with optimised scheduling and the efficient design of throughput times – the main focus here is on avoiding idle times. Effective numbering of all elements in the production process is also a central component of process planning.
Resource planning is about the most efficient capacity utilisation of material, personnel and also working space. Material planning is used for this purpose, in which the quantity and procurement route of the necessary material is determined and defined. Various methods of determining requirements (for example, programme-based or consumption-based) are used for this purpose, often in combination.
The organisation of working and operating time is an equally important part of resource planning. This involves the duration and distribution of the working hours that employees perform. Important working time models in the automotive industry are shift work, temporary work or even jumping employees.
A particularly comprehensive production process strategy is Lean Production. The core behind this is the avoidance of waste, which results in three core goals: Improving productivity, optimising product quality and increasing flexibility. Lean Production offers several tools and methods that can be used to achieve these goals.
A popular example for industrial companies is the Kanban system. Here, control loops are formed from production stages, each with an upstream material warehouse, which in turn are linked to each other. With the help of independent material withdrawal and the use of kanban cards that document consumption, a decentralised and demand-oriented material flow is created.
