Model-based Redesign of Factories (ReFa)

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Nyhuis
• Subject Area: Production Systems, Operations Management, Quality Management and Factory Planning
• Term: from 2014 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 253072601

Within the factory planning process, the technical and social elements of a factory as well as their relations are defined. For example, the material- and information-flows are influenced by the selected production control system and the procurement concept. Due to the fact, that the factory structure is exposed to several influencing factors, its structure elements and their relations among each other are affected continuously and thus have to be adapted accordingly. By just using descriptive process models, these adaptions cannot be implemented according to modern requirements.Existing approaches only include a rough description of the factory structure and neglect the effects of possible changes for established factory structures. The proposed research project is going to deal with the question, in which way and how strong changes in the factory environment influence the factory structure in terms of its elements and their relations. Furthermore a method, which enables the anticipation of resulting and necessary structural adaptions of the factory structure is going to be elaborated within this project. In a first step, a description model for the factory structure is going to be developed. In addition to that, possible adaptions are evaluated and documented. In a second step, a functional model, detailing the relations among all factory elements and describing their effects on each other is going to be designed. Using this functional model, necessary adaptions can be detected and executed following a predefined process.By the use of the model, necessary structural adjustments cannot only be identified but also transferred into measures and implemented in the factory. The adjustment of the affected elements is methodically supported. The quality dependence of the planer experience is reduced. Potential blockages, which lead to decelerations during the ramp-up of a factory after a restructuring process and by this to sales shortfalls or extensive error adjustment costs can be avoided or at least reduced. The transparency also allows the deduction of effective and efficient measures for the restructuring process, which will lower the amount of wasted resources in the company.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants