Methodical decision support for dynamic allocation planning of product variants in global manufacturing networks

• Applicant: Professorin Dr.-Ing. Gisela Lanza
• Subject Area: Production Systems, Operations Management, Quality Management and Factory Planning
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 408367989

Increasing product variety due to a geographical shift of customer demand and simultaneously increasing competitive pressure pose challenges for manufacturing companies when planning their global manufacturing networks.Therefore, the presented research proposal aims at supporting product variant allocation decisions in global manufacturing networks while optimally utilizing production structures and capacities in constantly changing production environments.Due to volatile product variant demand, decisions regarding product variant allocation to production stages and sites and configuration strategy decisions in manufacturing networks have to be made simultaneously. Only in this way, interdependencies between product variant production requirements and production structures and capacities can be considered appropriately.The main challenge addressed by this proposal is to cope with planning problem complexity when considering multiple and ever-changing product variants, production stages, and sites over multiple time periods. These changes contrast long-term and often irreversible decisions when planning manufacturing networks.Both, dynamic reconfigurability and flexibility measures of manufacturing network configurations need to be considered respectively. When demand changes for product variants or changes in the production environment cannot be compensated by flexibility measures any more, manufacturing network reconfiguration becomes essential. Transparency of restricting constrains for network structures and capacities, such as existing or potential staff at production sites, is significant for reconfiguration decisions. Based on an optimization model for global manufacturing networks considering flexibility measures and dynamic reconfigurability, an approach proposed to ensure the assurance of the solution found using post optimization methods. These methods allow for analysing the identified optimal solutions regarding further optimization potential and illustrating flexibility of the network configuration strategies to deviating demand trends.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants