Cycle-Orientated Production

In medium-sized enterprises, excessive product diversity and indivisible capacities often lead to fluctuating delivery schedules and an inability to meet delivery deadlines. These companies only draw limited benefits from traditional lean production methods because they are heavily oriented towards high-volume production with a low product mix.

Fraunhofer IPA has developed a production system with clear and simple procedures to help you manufacture customized products on schedule and within the timeframe stipulated by the customer. Called cycle-orientated production, the concept takes a holistic approach which significantly improves a company's logistics performance as far as throughput times and meeting deadlines are concerned. It starts with the planning stage and continues right through to the shopfloor.

The conventional cycle principle of lean production is strictly orientated towards sales rates - the so-called customer cycle. Strongly-fluctuating work contents and uncertainties render this principle unsuitable for the manufacture of high-mix goods. Cycle-orientated production, on the other hand, is orientated towards resource bottlenecks because these dictate the cycle. As well as assisting orientation and ensuring that deadlines are met, the cycles also create a buffer. Sequences are optimized with regard to setup times and any postponements due to failures, etc. no longer lead to instant rescheduling. This settles down the production process and allows it to run smoothly. The advantages of cycle-orientated production – increased productivity, punctual delivery with minimized throughput times and stocks – have been demonstrated in numerous companies.

In addition to production, many other areas can also be planned and controlled by the same principle. Among others, cycle-orientation has since been successfully implemented in development and design departments to achieve more transparency and plan capacities realistically as well as improve the ability to meet deadlines.

We help companies implement not only the concept of cycle-orientated production but also the necessary software to support production planning and control. This results in more transparency, more robust planning and better adherence to deadlines with less PPS effort.