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1996
Conference Paper
Titel
Agile Manufacturing durch Fraktale Strukturen
Alternative
Agile Manufacturing through Fractal Structures
Abstract
A dramatic situation has been broght about through the fierce competition in the global markets together with high cost pressure and the supremacy of Southeast Asian companies over a growing number of formerly European industrial sectors. Most companies are in the middle of a twofold crisis. On the one hand, European enterprises go through a severe, economic depression, on the other, they are subject to a structural crisis which threatens the survival of companies. The achievements of the last years distorted the view of what is essentially needed. The structural problems, which are leading to a cost disadvantage of about 30%, can not be solved by means of "ordinary" improvement methods. What is needed, is that all employees in an enterprise adopt a new line of thinking. In order to master the future, ways of thinking and points of view must be changed radically. The considerations must move away from static systems toward dynamic systems, away from mechanistic toward organic models of explanation and away from monocausal toward multidimensional explanations. We must learn to understand a manufacturing company as an integrated system with its own processes and structures, a system which does not develop in a linear way, which is not accurately predictable and whose interior and exterior limitations are fuzzy and permeable. The model of the fractal company is suggested.