Ramp-up curves based on individual competence development in a production with many variants

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Peter Nyhuis
• Subject Area: Production Systems, Operations Management, Quality Management and Factory Planning
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 521412658

The ramp-up is a crucial phase in the introduction of new products into a production facility and is used to qualify employees and production processes as well as equipment. Multi-variant products are often characterized by differing processes, which have to be learned in detail by the employees. They must be given the appropriate time for familiarizing with the processes. Often however, the ramp-up is carried out parallel to regular operation, which makes the competence development difficult. Additionally, individual learning and forgetting effects have an impact on the performance of production during ramp-up. If these employee-specific effects are combined with the requirements of production, it is necessary to organize ramp-ups accordingly. In this context, competence-oriented ramp-up design should support positive effects and minimize negative influences in order to improve performance. Possible employee-specific influencing factors include for example, learning ability, motivation and forgetting behavior, which ought to have an effect on the target values of a ramp-up (e.g. time, quality, costs). The research project therefore aims to develop a qualitative and quantitative model that enables the study of these effects and the planning of a ramp-up, taking into account the optimal competence development of the employees. In order to ensure that the activities are close to reality, a continuous comparison with industrial companies is aspired. In the first part of the project, the influencing and control variables of an employee-oriented ramp-up are determined and linked with each other. In the second part, the interactions are outlined and operationalized along with the influencing- and control-variables. In a simulation study within the third step, selected interrelationships are simulated and thus quantified. The final model in the fourth step enables the description of the optimal production ramp-up on the basis of employee-specific competence development, while considering company-specific boundary conditions. A prototypical software demonstrator is used to represent the results of the project and to achieve usability for application of real data.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants