Factory Planning and Production Management

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If a company wants to stay ahead of the competition, its factories and production facilities have to operate at maximum technical, logistical and organizational performance levels. Continuous improvement as well as more drastic, fundamental changes and adaptions are decisive to a factory’s sustained success.

With our factory planning and production optimization services, we help manufacturing companies pursue their core factory goals. Our services range from planning factory premises, through strategically aligning production and optimizing operations, right up to product value engineering and designing the necessary manufacturing and assembly processes.

Our newly-developed methods not only ensure that your factory is designed using the latest information but also that it maintains its competitive edge for years to come.

 

Factory Planning and Intralogistics

Would you like to simplify complicated plant structures or plan a new factory? Fraunhofer IPA designs factories to make them fit for the future – from the drawing board through to start of production.

 

Production Management and Value Stream Mapping and Design

Would you like to have a clear picture of production processes and optimize your value stream? Fraunhofer IPA develops innovative concepts for production processes.

 

Planning Manufacturing Systems

Do you want to configure your manufacturing systems cost-effectively? Fraunhofer IPA develops concepts to cut production costs and keep your prices competitive.

 

Planning Assembly Operations

Do you want to optimize your assembly line or plan a new one? Fraunhofer IPA offers end-to-end solutions for an efficient, cost-effective assembly process.

 

Autonomous Production Optimization

The focus of production optimization is on Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). This key figure is used to evaluate the efficiency of technical systems and takes into account the three factors causing effectiveness losses in production: Availability, Performance, Quality

 

 

Operational excellence in production & logistics

Do you want to optimize your production and logistics systems? And effectively implement efficient production? Fraunhofer IPA analyzes and prioritizes measures for production and intralogistics optimization and supports the subsequent agile implementation of the improvement projects to achieve all goals.

 

Structuring production and optimizing of the area-productivity rate at Diehl Aerospace

To create space for offices, Diehl Aerospace is planning to concentrate its production area into two floors instead of three. As part of a project with Fraunhofer IPA, a changeable and compact factory concept based on lean production methods was developed.

 

KI-noW – artificial intelligence to sustainably optimize value creation

KI-noW shows manufacturing companies the benefits of using artificial intelligence and assists with digitization tasks in production.   

 

Efficient, flexible and sustainable assembly concept designed at Voith

Sensor-based analysis of manual assembly processes combined with an automation potential analysis for a future-proof, efficient and highly flexible assembly concept.

 

Site Roles for the Global Production Network for Joyson

The heterogeneous tasks in the manufacturing at Joyson Safety Systems require a segmentation of the locations according to their value-added tasks. The aim is to define clear site roles in order to enable clear development paths for all plants and a feasible comparison between them.

 

Value stream-based factory planning at TRACOE medical GmbH

When planning a new factory, TRACOE medical GmbH collaborated with Fraunhofer IPA to develop sustainable factory structures and processes.

 

Matrix production in flow at the Siemens AG plant in Karlsruhe

The decision to implement a new plant strategy at Siemens in Karlsruhe has brought about higher production demands. To meet these requirements, the decision was made to introduce matrix production combined with classic lean lines. The measures needed for implementation were analyzed together with an interdisciplinary team from Fraunhofer IPA.

 

New evaluation model detects productivity potentials between 6 and 10 percent through cycle time reduction of Freudenberg machines

Researchers at Fraunhofer IPA calculated hidden potentials in the cycle time of machines from Freudenberg.

 

Fraunhofer IPA supports ramp-up at Kromberg & Schubert in the Corona crisis

After worldwide production was largely suspended at Kromberg & Schubert due to the Corona shutdown, Fraunhofer IPA worked with the automotive supplier to develop and implement a catalog of safety measures to protect the employees, suppliers and customers at all 26 factories across the globe.

 

Hidden OEE potential of 8.6 percent at Adient identified thanks to data-driven analysis of manufacturing equipment

At the automotive supplier Adient, Fraunhofer IPA analyzed the causes of downtimes and rejects occurring with a fast-cycle, automated manufacturing system for producing fittings to adjust the position of vehicle seats.

 

Cross-site production concept raises efficiency potential at European Convenience Food GmbH

At European Convenience Food GmbH, we were asked to identify synergies and potentials of two production sites of the company and to plan how to exploit them.

 

Digitization strategy for fischer

At the fischer Group of Companies, the demand for digitization solutions is so high that more than 60 industry 4.0 projects have been created bottom-up. The company has recognized the potential of higher-level planning. Together with Fraunhofer IPA, fischer developed a strategy which prioritizes existing projects to support new digitization ideas.

 

Transforming a chinese machinery manufacturer into a leading factory for digital and smart manufacturing

Fraunhofer IPA supported a rubber machinery manufacturer to consolidate two current production sites into one.

 

Increase in OEE of 10% for existing systems at SCHOTT

At SCHOTT Schweiz AG, Fraunhofer IPA applied a patented method to examine the highly-automated syringe manufacturing system for errors and their causes, or to find out where these errors were being reproduced in the networked system.

 

Design for Assembly (DfA) based on the example of an electric motor

To find ways of improving the cost-effectiveness of assembly processes at FERTIG Motors GmbH, the experts from Fraunhofer IPA carried out their Automation Potential Analysis. The resulting recommendations for action enable the company to design their assembly process more efficiently, thus saving time and costs.

 

Productivity improved by up to 20% through new works structure at Elektror airsystems gmbh

Optimization of a production system with several locations: A project system using the example of a convenience food manufacturer.

 

Ergonomics and automation in wheel hotels

Handling wheels is a physically demanding job. Therefore, the company 4WHEELS commissioned Fraunhofer IPA to systematically search for practicable solutions to take the strain off their employees.