Integrated Production Planning - Time is money!
A short impulse for the introduction of a simultaneous product development and production planning method, utilizing PLM and factory planning tools, and standardized data exchange.
Today, we live in a world in which commercially available products are becoming increasingly complex. One example is modern passenger cars, which are already being equipped with an increasing number of driving assistance systems in the small and medium class range. Like many other industries, the automotive industry is undergoing major changes: Among other things, more and more electronic components and sensors have to be installed in cars to support these systems. [1] At the same time, customer demand for more product variability or product individuality is increasing, which in turn requires more flexible manufacturing methods and complicates the entire product life cycle (Figure 1).
The resulting changes to the production systems must be planned and validated with foresight. Nevertheless, deep integration of production planning into product creation is often missing today. One reason for this lack of consistency is the poorly integrated processes between production planning and product creation as well as isolated solutions in the IT landscapes of manufacturing companies. These have often arisen due to a lack of standardized interfaces.
So how can the new construction and retrofitting of production facilities be digitally secured throughout with increasing product complexity to avoid additional costs?
Digitally secure production processes with an integrated IT infrastructure
Addressing precisely these challenges was one of the central goals of the Electric Drives 2.0 (EA) research project of the Werner-von-Siemens Centre for Industry and Science (WvSC) [2] in which CONTACT Research took part. In the project, I have worked together with various research institutions and industry partners to create new production planning processes to enable companies to survive in a dynamic market environment.
One approach pursued in the project is called Integrated Production Planning (IPP), in which bills of materials, routings and factory layouts are developed simultaneously in the Product Engineering Process (PEP) and mutually validated to obtain consistent results. This makes it possible, for example, to secure any customer equipment requests (product individuality) for new cars produced on the same production line in the factory based on individual work plans. And best of all, a lot of time can be saved, because as we all know: Time is money!
IPP differentiates between
- a product- or bill of materials-centric planning approach based on the engineering and manufacturing bills of materials (eBOM/ mBOM),
- a process-centric planning approach through the respective work plan design
- and a resource-centric planning approach based on an associated production layout.
The planning processes are accompanied by efficiency and feasibility analyses, which, for example, enable the evaluation of the manufacturing process of new product variants on existing equipment.
The integration of production planning into the company-wide technical change management and project management also creates a better link between product engineering and manufacturing engineering.
The prerequisites for IPP are three pillars that must merge seamlessly. The first pillar is the standardized exchange of parts list (eBOM and mBOM) as well as meta, 3D, resource and model data via a semantically open interface for tool integration. The second pillar is efficient library data management for the administration of production resources, mBOM standard components, consumables and production resources. And last but not least, comprehensive results data management for the resulting routings, factory plans, simulation data, cycle time analyses, etc. is needed as the third pillar.
Such integrated planning aims to secure existing routings, eBOMs, and mBOMs of products in the PLM system such as CONTACT CIM Database PLM.
So a tool is needed for IPP that can exchange information from the PEP coherently with the PLM system via a semantically open interface.
Factory planning during the product development process as an integral part of the work plan
One such software tool being considered for use in IPP is AutoPlan[3], which is being developed by the research institute Gesellschaft zur Förderung angewandter Informatik e.V. (GFaI) [4] based in Berlin.
The software tool allows production planners to create plant layouts manually or automatically, and analyze them for performance (cycle time diagram) and rough investment costs. The flexible application options of the tool also enable an existing plant to be quickly and easily rescheduled, which means that new planning alternatives can also be conveniently compared with each other. This means that several different production layouts of a plant for a product variant can be weighed against each other to implement the most cost-optimal and efficient production solution.
For integrative use in the sense of IPP, the GFaI tool was extended within the framework of the EA project, whereby production or factory planners can now also create work plans for the factory layouts during production planning or include them in the plant planning process. In addition, product data such as bills of materials and documents and standard components such as production resources/tools, logistics items, standard components and production resources are now also used as input from the PLM system in the planning process and linked to the plant. Afterwards, the created manufacturing BOMs and corresponding plant layouts as well as the operation graphs of the manufacturing processes and the generated cycle time diagrams are then stored as process results in the PLM system for further evaluation.
Standardised message exchange through semantically open interfaces
So-called semantically open interfaces are indispensable for the concept, enabling the exchangeability and flexible integration of the tools involved. Especially in already established production processes, a large number of tools with a wide variety of underlying information systems are involved. The replacement of these tools is usually time-consuming and costly. Through platform-independent exchange formats, these tools can be integrated into the planning processes at a low cost and independently of their data structures.
These formats are described in the form of ontologies, which were also developed in the EA project. In the sense of the strategic triangle of digital sovereignty, the data is to be structured around the products and made available for cross-brand projects across company boundaries. The ontologies thereby specify the business objects involved, their functions, their attributes (vocabulary) and also their relationships in a system-independent way. The basis for this is common conventions and structures to which the ontologies are oriented and which are described in specifications. This ensures that the systems involved can understand and evaluate the received structured data in the form of messages.
The messages for the integration of AutoPlan include BOM types, standard components for mBOMs, factory information like existing workstations, resources, manufacturing tools, and documents such as assembly instructions and technical descriptions.
This IPP solution created in the EA project thus provides another component for the end-to-end securing of the PEP. By synchronising product development and production planning, unnecessary costs can be identified and avoided in advance.
But what is your assessment of the topic and where can we possibly work together and create added value for the industry? Please feel free to contact me for more in-depth insights, questions and other concerns. I am never averse to a well-founded discussion. And stay tuned for more blog posts on current topics from the world of production, services and digital lifecycle management.
[1] Fahrzeugbau — wie verändert sich die Wertschöpfungskette, ifo Studie BIHK, https://www.ihk-muenchen.de/ihk/documents/Industrie/BIHK_ifo-Studie_Fahrzeugbau_final.pdf
[2] Werner-von-Siemens Centre for Industry and Science, https://wvsc.berlin/en/
[3] AutoPlan, Gesellschaft zur Förderung angewandter Informatik e.V. (GFaI), https://www.gfai.de/en/solutions/processes-infrastructure/autoplan
[4] Gesellschaft zur Förderung angewandter Informatik e.V. (GFaI), https://www.gfai.de/en/
