Reference planning processes for series production

Abstract

In the modern product emergence process production planning gets increasingly important and has to be executed in parallel to the product development. Different requirements and heterogeneous system architectures often result in inefficient planning processes. To standardize and optimize these planning processes, the ProSTEP iViP project group "Digital Manufacturing" has defined a reference process for production planning based on actual user experiences. The defined reference process supports the creation of planning processes tailored to the specific needs of many companies and locations and thus supports efficient production planning. Furthermore the reference process amends common understanding and transparency of terms and processes in order to enable efficient communication e.g. between planner and the IT department. This reference process represents also the foundation for the definition of necessary interfaces in supporting systems of the Digital Factory to enable integrated and continuous workflows. It allows easy reuse of existing planning documents and knowhow. The special importance of this approach is to build a "blueprint" for faster and easier implementation of production planning. © 2011 Springer-Verlag London Limited.