Demand-Based Information Exchange for Hybrid Processes

Lecture notes in production engineering, pp. 663–671

Abstract

Abstract The manufacturing industry is currently facing a highly volatile, uncertain and complex competitive environment, which companies must address. This challenge has resulted in an increasing number of companies adopting agile processes, enabling them to react more quickly to changing market conditions. Existing plan-driven processes both in production as well as development are often supplemented by agile components to create so-called hybrid processes. However, the development and production of mechatronic products is becoming increasingly challenging due to the need of synchronization of parallel plan-oriented processes and the agile way of working. To facilitate the synchronization of hybrid projects, standardizing the required information flow for agile and plan-driven processes is essential. This ensures transparency in a hybrid environment and enables the traceability of decisions. Moreover, standardized information exchange provides an opportunity to establish systematic knowledge management based on the respective role, thus supporting efficient reuse of information. This paper presents a concept for systematic identification of information demands in hybrid project organizations. First, relevant activities, artifacts and roles in a hybrid project organization are described to derive superordinate project organization types. Following, interdependencies between these organization types and their related artifacts are identified. Thus, relevant information flows and requirements for each role in the hybrid environment are specified. Finally, measures tailored to specific information demands of hybrid project organizations are derived. As a result, the approach enables the systematic, demand-oriented exchange of information between different entities in hybrid production and development processes.

Authors 5

1. Jonas Recker corresponding Aachen Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL)

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

2. Timm Schulz-Isenbeck Aachen Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL)

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

3. S. Schümmelfeder Aachen Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL)

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

4. Alexander Keuper Aachen Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL)

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

5. Günther Schuh Aachen Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL)

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany