Flexibility Planning in Automotive Plants

The scope of this paper is the medium term capacity planning in the automotive sector. Production and labour capacity of an automotive plant are considered simultaneously in one model. The planning task is to find cost optimal capacity levels for a horizon of one to seven years using given flexibility instruments like different working time models or cycle times. The goal is to reduce fix cost by adapting capacity to the current demand. In contrast to the long term strategic planning, no additional invest in machines is considered. One major part of the problem is to find a valid coordination of production programs between the different shops of an automotive plant. An optimization approach based on dynamic programming is introduced. The approach has been implemented within the framework of a decision-support-system which is in use in several plants of the Daimler-Chrysler AG. Finally a case study illustrates the benefit of the optimal usage of capacity flexibility and the advantage of different flexibility instruments.