The Global Production Networks newsletter provides you occasionally with the latest information about our research topics and upcoming projects.
Global Production Networks
We offer approaches, solutions, and the latest research results to address your challenges in the field of global production.
"Think global, act local... or global? Focussing on the plant-level and advancing local skills and know-how, or developing a global production network that integrates globally dispersed sites: Contradicting challenges and incompatible tasks?"
Managing global production is more than optimizing single sites. It is about unlocking the potentials of the whole production network. International studies show that improving the network structure offers significantly higher returns than optimizing individual sites. A fit between global production strategy, network configuration and network coordination is the key-prerequisite for a well-organized production network. Our science-based and practice-proven production network management approach builds the basis of many companies’ global production activities.
Challenge your production network with our Production Network Quick-Check.
Consulting Projects – Advance your production network
Our science-based production network management approach provides the tools and methods for all our consulting projects. It has proven its usefulness and applicability in our assessment and optimization of more than 65 production networks.
Our experts and consultants are keen to apply their experience from research and practice projects to your production network. You may profit from their knowledge through detailed assessments, benchmarks, and tailored workshops. In an individual project, we guide you through your global production strategy elaboration, your production set-up configuration, and your coordination of dispersed production sites towards effective and efficient network management.
Read more about our consulting projects in the area of production networks.
Benchmarking Projects – Compare yourself to others and learn from the best
Our proven benchmarking process supports you and your company in identifying improvement potentials in the fields of global production management, digitalization of manufacturing and operations management in general. Together with other companies, you constitute a consortium that defines the exact topic and benchmarking questions according to your needs.
We organize the whole process including questionnaire design, survey evaluation and site visits at successful practices. Thereby you learn in a practice-driven and scientifically-validated way how others succeeded in solving your problems.
Read more about our benchmarking projects.
Research Projects – Develop innovative approaches and solutions with us
As a university institute, we are not only eager to contribute to real-world applications in companies but also to advance the scientific frontier. However, since our research focus is on global production networks, we collaborate with such companies for research purposes as well.
Both industrial companies and public organizations fund our research projects. In general, these projects do not directly generate additional revenue or cost savings for collaborating companies. Instead, they support them in understanding their decisions in a better way and in laying the groundwork for future initiatives and optimizations. Take the chance to shape the future of global production networks together with us.
Read more about our research projects in collaboration with industry.
Global Production Academy - Exchange with two research institutes and our industry partners
In 2022 we started our Global Production Academy in collaboration with the KIT. With two leading research institutes led by Prof. Friedli (St.Gallen) and Prof. Lanza (Karlsruhe) and currently 7 multinational companies, we discuss the current challenges within global production networks and work on solutions, commonly.
Each of our exchange days includes a unique exchange between practitioners and researchers consisting of keynote presentations, discussions, workshops, shopfloor tours, and network sessions. The program is complemented by a get-together on a respective evening before the exchange to get to know each other personally.
Read more about our Global Production Academy.
News & Projects
View all our news and projects in our archive.
Benchmarking: Artificial Intelligence in Operations
The final conference on the 1st of March in Aachen was the last get-together in our Consortium Benchmarking Artificial Intelligence in Operations.
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Benchmarking: Global Production Strategies
The final conference closed the consortium benchmarking global productions strategies 2022. Prof. Dr. Thomas Friedli and Prof. Dr. Klaus Möller gave insights from research with their keynote speeches. Also, the five visits at Dätwyler, Festo, IMS:Gear, Schott and Kuka were summarized and discussed.
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Global Production Academy 2022: 4. Site Visit at CLAAS
Our fourth and last meeting of our Global Production Academy 2022 took place at CLAAS in Harsewinkel this week.
As a globally leading agricultural machinery manufacturer CLAAS shared current insights into its production and its risk mitigation strategy for the global production network. In joint discussion rounds with our consortium together with Herrenknecht, CLAAS, FACC, HOMAG, MTU Aero Engines, Balluff, PERI and our research partner the wbk Institute of Production Science (wbk-KIT) we could collect and define valuable successful practices
Once again, we would like to express our sincere thanks to all participating companies for their exciting insights, our great discussions and openness in all four meetings. We are already looking forward to continuing our discussions in 2023.
If you would like to be part of our Global Production Academy 2023, feel free to reach out to our GPA Team!
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Global Production Academy 2022: 3. Site Visit at HOMAG
Last Friday, the third meeting of the Global Production Academy, founded together with the wbk Institute of Production Science (wbk-KIT), took place. HOMAG, a leading manufacturer of woodworking machinery, shared exciting insights into its production strategy and its data-based approach for product allocation in the network. Afterwards, different approaches to design the production network were discussed together with the experts from Herrenknecht AG, CLAAS, FACC AG, HOMAG, MTU Aero Engines, Balluff EMEA and PERI In particular, the handling of uncertainty in the business environment and the consideration of soft decision criteria played a major role. We are already looking forward to deepening these discussions in the fourth meeting at the CLAAS on the topic of risk mitigation.
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