Model-based Process Generation For Supporting Agile Shop Floor Management In SMEs

In recent years, the framework conditions on the Chinese market for machine and equipment manufacturing have changed significantly. By now, products are expected to be customized and at the same time offered at low prices with fast delivery times. Thereby, customer-specific production processes are becoming increasingly important in manufacturing. In addition, German small and medium-sized companies are confronted with a progressively turbulent business environment. For example, Chinese customers expect that orders can still be changed after they had been placed. Hence, companies must be able to identify short-term changes and individual requirements at an early stage. In order to withstand the competitive pressure, alternative courses of action must be created by generating new process variants quickly and reliably. To address this challenge, an approach for the automated generation and realization of processes based on an integrated enterprise model for supporting agile shop floor management as part of an agile process management system is being developed in the German-Chinese joint research project “MAP” and proposed in this paper. Starting with an introduction into the subject matter, the development gap is demonstrated and an approach as well as an early prototype is presented, followed by an outlook on further development in the research project.