Decentralized Equipment and Process Responsibility in a Fractally-organized Company

Enormous cost pressures are causing manufacturing companies to also reconsider the structures of indirect areas such as maintenance. Under the new holistic production concepts, all departments of a company are to be aligned to common goals. The concept of "decentralized equipment and process responsibility" (DEPR) was developed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineers and Automation (IPA) in Stuttgart, Germany. The advantages of decentralized structures, such as faster and more effective communication in smaller feedback loops, are combined with the benefits of centralization of process-related know-how. With its strict process-orientation, the DEPR concept not only goes beyond the existing TPM philosophy, it also includes the basic organizational conditions which must be created for the integration of maintenance into production. Responsibility for equipment and certain maintenance tasks such as servicing and simple inspections must be increasingly handed over to the pr oduction employees. The experience gained in many projects from various branches shows how important it is to consider operational basic conditions such as company size, employee qualification and the type of production facilities in specific DEPR concepts.