Simulation of personnel requirements during production ramp-up

Abstract

Nowadays the number of product models constantly increases, due to a strong competition to innovate and the reduction of product life cycles, resulting in a more frequent occurrence of production ramp-ups. The production ramp-up combines the product development with the series production and has an impact on the market entry timing. In order to ensure an ideal ramp-up with new developed products being placed on the market as quickly as possible, there has to be an efficient use of existing resources, especially of human resources. Nevertheless, the planning of these resources turns out to be the most important challenge because it is directly related to a great uncertainty. The following article represents an approach that is being developed at the Institute of Production Science (wbk) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) to optimize the forecast of the personnel requirements during ramp-up by taking into account the dynamic planning variables and organizational basic conditions. Therefore, a method will be developed that provides support to the responsible persons of the respective production ramp-up to calculate the necessary manpower for every single ramp-up phase and to realize the economic optimum. This method focuses on a simulation of the ramp-up process that allows an economically more efficient use of human resources.