FORLOG

BAVARIAN RESEARCH ASSOCIATION FOR SUPRA-ADAPTIVE LOGISTIC SYSTEMS

MitLog

Field of work:

Objectives The changes in demand require continuous modifications of products and their quantities. An adaptive reaction to these new requests implies that lots of changes appear on numerous interfaces in logistics systems. For example, the results are the displacement of activities within the production chain, the postponement of responsibilities between suppliers, service providers and OEM, or the increase of the number of suppliers conditional upon new cooperation partners. MitLog puts the focus on human resources as the important factor in production and logistics processes. The aim is to enable the worker to deal with the high requests of supra-adaptive logistics systems. The availability of expertise must have the same flexibility as the considered logistics systems itself. On the one hand, this can be achieved by labour mobility, on the other hand by information mobility. Regarding this, the essential questions and subjects are: • The development of types of labour organizations for flexible worker redistribution within and beyond the company’s boundary. • The guarantee of information mobility through utilisation of information and communication technologies for the demand-oriented information supply (for example, process knowledge) over the whole logistics network. • The configuration of the failure management systems including the failure-input option and representation of errors in the context of a permanent quality assurance and improvement in quality. • The application of modern Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies for the education and support of workers, concerning the continuous change in work processes. Procedure & Aims Methodically, this procedure represents an empirically guided modeling, which should be confirmed by a „soft“ validation, by performing discussions within the research cooperation with automotive manufacturers and their subcontractors as well as by a „hard“ validation, by proofing the developed demonstrators in industrial environments. Out of the production integrated tests, experiences can be obtained for the development of generic basic approaches for coupling physical components with the information required for assemblies and quality inspections. Results The first basic approach for defining reference processes for the concepts and demonstrators was carried out with essential support by the practical knowledge of the industry partners. The concept developed for the demand-oriented employment of flexible workers supports the labour organisation and points out methods for how to react as fast as possible to the requirements of supra-adaptivity (e.g. demand undulations) by enhancing the labour’s mobility. Furthermore two demonstrators were developed. On the one hand, a virtual learning environment was created for the job rotation in a division for the manually assembly of electronic switching units. On the other hand, a demonstrator for the analysis of a demand-oriented, augmented information supply in an order-picking surroundings was developed which enables the improvement of the workers flexible employment especially in start-up situations. The network-wide communication of errors for a permanent quality assurance and improvement in quality shall be pointed out in a further step by means of this order picking demonstrator. In this context, the usage of portable devices like PDA will be considered besides the Augmented Reality technologies.