Measuring sequence stability in automotive production lines

ABSTRACT

We consider the question of how stability in automotive manufacturing systems should be analysed. This topic is motivated by the need of original equipment manufacturers to evaluate the performance of their production system to ensure efficiency and long-term competitiveness. In order to deal with the increasing complexity of the manufacturing process, original equipment manufacturers need to focus on efficiency in the manufacturing process and supply chain. Since stability is one determining factor of efficiency they need to implement indicators to quantify and visualise stability. While the overall target for the long-, mid- and short-term planning processes remain the same, the application of and specifications for performance measures differ. We present, analyse and evaluate different indicators and reveal their capability to represent the status of stabilised production facilities. We also describe the challenges that arise when implementing these performance measures in real-world production facilities and give recommendations on how to manage these challenges. We provide a framework to assign indicators to planning problems. The transparency provided by accurately chosen indicators fosters understanding of the overall performance of the system and enhances the management of stabilised production.

Keywords:

• Performance measures
• automotive industry
• stabilised production system
• flow lines
• mixed-model assembly lines
• operational feedback

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the Guest Editor of the special issue for their valuable recommendations, which have significantly improved our paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mareike Müller

Mareike Müller ([email protected]) graduated from the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt with the Master’s degree in Management Science and is currently enrolled as a PhD student and lecturer for Operations Research. She has accepted a position at the Macromedia University of Applied Science in Cologne as a Full Professor of Management. She has worked for 7 years at a German OEM in the field of automotive production and logistics. During this time, she executed a range of different functions in the field of scheduling, manufacturing planning and optimization. Her research interest focuses on simulation, stabilized production systems and buffer allocation.

Marcel Lehmann

Marcel Lehmann ([email protected]) graduated from the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt with the Master’s degree in Management Science and is currently enrolled as a PhD student and lecturer for operations research. He gained expertise in automotive production and logistics from several years spent at different German OEMs. His research interests are operations research methods focused on the optimization of the automotive manufacturing process, in particular simulation and scheduling/allocation problems.

Heinrich Kuhn

Heinrich Kuhn ([email protected]) is a Full Professor for Supply Chain Management & Operations at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany, and a Guest Professor at the Free University of Bolzano, Italy, and a former Deputy Professor at the University of Vienna. He received his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering from Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany, and completed his formal qualifications as a professor in Business Administration at the University of Cologne, Germany. His research interests focus on automotive and consumer goods and retail. Dr. Kuhn is author or coauthor of numerous articles published in Naval Research Logistics, IIE Transactions, International Journal of Production Research, European Journal of Operational Research, and other journals. He is an Associate Editor of Business and Research as well as Omega, the International Journal of Management Science.