Logistical product portfolio assessment

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Nyhuis
• Subject Area: Production Systems, Operations Management, Quality Management and Factory Planning
• Term: from 2019 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 423857520

Established approaches to portfolio valuation support the composition of product portfolios. In most cases, however, they focus on economic and market potential-oriented aspects. Conversely, there is a lack of logistical consideration of the products. This holds the danger that products, which are to be evaluated positively with regard to financial ratios or their market potential, but at the same time have a very negative influence on the logistics performance of the company, are not subjected to a critical assessment.For this reason, an approach for a logistic product portfolio evaluation is to be developed in the research project proposed here. Therefore, a systematic description of the cause-effect relationships between a product portfolio and the logistic target values is to be carried out in order to estimate the influence of specific products from this portfolio on the logistic performance and the logistic costs of an internal supply chain. The combination with other evaluation parameters enables a multi-criteria product portfolio optimization. The research project pursues two consecutive subgoals. The first subgoal is to enable a model-based, logistical evaluation of product portfolios and their products. First, relevant driver variables (e.g. characteristics of product portfolios and products) are to be identified and their influence on logistics performance and logistics costs is to be made describable via effective relationships. Based on this, concrete evaluation techniques will be developed in order to assess the logistic-relevant properties of a product portfolio and to identify critical products from a logistic point of view. The second subgoal of the research project is the integration of logistic-oriented findings into a methodology for multicriterial product portfolio evaluation and optimization. For this the question is to be answered which dimensions (e.g. market potential oriented) should be evaluated and which evaluation techniques can be used, e.g. to analyse the logistic-relevant characteristics and to identify critical products from a logistical point of view. The evaluation and optimization should be designed as a universally applicable and easy to implement workshop format. In order to facilitate the implementation and increase resistance to errors, the concept is to be supported by a software application that can be adapted to individual constraints and scenarios. In order to assess the effects of potential optimization measures on logistics performance and logistics costs, it will be determined how the resulting logistics performance and the resulting logistics costs can be model-based estimated in the event of a change in the product portfolio.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants