News and Projects Archive
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.
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!
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.
On September 22nd our second meeting of the Global Production Academy took place at Herrenknecht in Schwanau.
On July 22nd our first meeting of the Global Production Academy took place at Peri in Weissenhorn.
Together with the wbk of the KIT, we have set ourselves the goal of bringing together industrial companies to discuss and further develop current topics in global production networks.
We want to examine approaches to implement and operate Manufacturing Execution Systems for manufacturing operations management globally across plants in order to develop an agile and resilient manufacturing network based on digital technologies and Industry 4.0.
Two of our research associates took part at this year’s EurOMA conference in Helsinki. Christian Elbe presented the topic of “Manufacturing execution systems in international manufacturing networks” and Dominik Remling the topic of “Digital Technologies to coordinate manufacturing networks”.
Digitalization and the application of digital technologies such as artificial intelligence, smart robotics, augmented reality or big data are progressing steadily. In particular, companies with plants in countries such as Germany or Switzerland are expecting new productivity gains and a positive impact on the competiveness of their high-wage locations. But which technologies are really relevant? What collaborations are important and what are the overall benefits of digitization?
Today Christoph Benninghaus has made the final step of his doctoral phase. He confidently mastered the questions of the professors and successfully defended his doctoral thesis, “Impact of Digitalization on the Strategic Management of International Manufacturing Networks.”
We wish him all the best for his new, challenging position in a multinational manufacturing company.
The focus group "Global Production" at the chair of production management is currently looking for a student assistent.
Professor Friedli describes in the article the importance of digitalisation for plants in high-wage countries. According to two surveys conducted at the Institute, a majority out of a sample of more than 270 participants think that digitalisation helps to keep production in high-wage countries whereas at the same time a similar majority thinks that no new plants will be necessarily established due to digitalisation. You can read the article here: Produktion – Technik und Wirtschaft für die deutsche Industrie (2018) Vol. 30, p. 31