Development of an automation concept for complex process machines under the aspects of low cost automation and lean management

Abstract

The continuously focusing on cost and investment reduction, profit increase, efficiency improvements and chasing for market shares within the automotive world leads to a change in the perspective, approaches and mind set for production systems. With the revolutionary development of the Toyota Production System with its lean management aspects and approaches, it became to a prime example of efficiency and productivity within the automotive industry. Despite of following the Toyota Production System with its lean approach, still various manufacturing companies have to deal with high complexity and sophistication one side and investment reduction and efficiency improvement on the other side. This thesis concentrates on both aspects. The investment and life cycle cost reduction under the consideration and integration of the following criteria, usage of own expertise, integration of low cost components and implementation by own people. And efficiency and productivity improvement by involvement of flexible and simple automation with low grade of automation, a clear separation between manual handling and automation and process orientation due to modular and simple machine structure, always in context with Lean Management. A research on state of the art in the field of low cost automation and lean management with its methods and principles will be the basis for the concept development. Finally the low cost automation concept for complex process machines will be developed based the application of the derived and selected methods and principles. A structured qualitative validation in from of an expert interview guided by a validation matrix with the above derived criteria and a certain weighting will validate the developed and implemented concept. As a summary it can be stated according the result of validation by the experts that the concept achieves the objective of investment reduction and efficiency improvement. From the low cost automation point of view and lean management aspect is the concept also absolutely efficient and applicable. It is recommended to follow up on the defined approach of low cost automation.