Abstract
The Institute of Machine Tools and Production Science at the University of Karlsruhe (wbk) has developed a new approach of integrated strategic planing and control for manufacturing companies.
In a first step a strategy for production is defined on the basis of market and technology informations: The Process Calendar is a method for strategic production development. It comes from substantial general management inputs and comprises the interface of product characteristics with manufacturing technology and organization based on so-called "Innovation-Families". In a second step the new production strategy has to be implemented in processes on a lower level of detail. Clear targets and a framework for measures are output of the Process Calendar method entering the operative level. For a successful implementation it is very important to put the human resource in the center of organizational efforts.
The Object-oriented Process and Structure Innovation (OPUS) is an integral concept, which guarantees the realistic reproduction of the human behavior with regard to work and communication. The special strength of the method is, that the object-oriented modeling of the new processes delivers already exact information about the objects (attributes and methods) and about kind and intensity of the interchange between them. With these informations optimized interfaces and necessary object profiles can be determined.
Regarding a dynamic adaptation of the business processes and the organizational structures to the changing market situation and strategy especially the informal relations of communication have to be focused. This is realized by using computers for the support of Informal Communication in distributed structures. Based on an automatic distribution of the occurring information, in the next step deficiencies and potentials in communication and information can be detected. In this way a continuous market driven improvement of business processes and the organizational structures can be obtained.