Interactive Factory Planning: Team-based Computer Supported Planning (TCSP)

In the past, the planning of factories and manufacturing systems was regarded as a once-in-a-lifetime process. However, the growing turbulence of today's global market and the resulting shorter product life cycles and demand fluctuations require continuous adaptation as defined by the principle of Continuous Enterprise Development (CED). To enable for the continuous adaptation of manufacturing structures, it is necessary to drastically reduce planning time, for example by abolishing delay times in the planning process, by ecexuting planning steps simultaneously and by eliminating redundant and thus non-value-adding work. In addition, the know-how of all persons involved in the planning process must be integrated at an early stage to ensure that the planning is accepted. The Team-based Computer Supported Planning (TCSP) method changes the planning of factories and manufacturing systems in a way which allows for a considerable reduction of planning time. The TCSP approach cuts down any additional effort in transferring team meeting results into data models and thus shortens the time from model creation to model evaluation.