Monitoring and diagnosis systems: New components of production planning and control — methodologies, applications and experience

Traditional performance measurement in job shop production disregards the new challenges concerning logistics-oriented customer demands. Additionally, the manufacturing of innovative products requires lean and efficient production structures and stable production processes. But the way to lean production often suffers from the lack of objective performance criteria at shop floor level. We introduce new approaches for the logistics evaluation of production: monitoring and diagnostic methods support the analysis of production flows and order structures, allowing for a quantified turn to account of hidden potentials. By means of a dependency model combined with AI techniques, deviations are detected and even appropriate actions can be proposed. On this basis, company-wide accepted information systems with illustrative graphics help to keep on-track with consistent and realistic defined goals.