Production system (company)

A production system is

a) in the production economy a system in which something is produced: a company, a factory, a production segment, workshops or production lines.

b) in management theory, a system of strategies, principles and methods for production within a company. An example is the Toyota production system , which is based on the basic idea of ​​avoiding waste and uses methods such as continuous improvement processes, Kanban or just-in-time concepts.

Production economy

Companies as systems

The concept of production management is based on the idea that companies can be described as systems, e.g. as input / throughput / output systems. The input represents goods that are made available to the system for transformation from outside (so-called production factors : labor, raw materials, electricity, heat, etc.). The throughput is the actual transformation process, i.e. the change in the processing objects. The output is the release of objects from the production process into the environment, which either leave the company or are further processed. This includes, on the one hand, the release of manufactured or modified processing objects, heat or generated electricity, but on the other hand also undesired objects such as exhaust gases, waste water, hazardous waste or chips.

According to systems theory , systems consist of sub-systems which, depending on the chosen view, can in turn be systems until one arrives at units / elements that cannot be further subdivided. For example, an entire company can be viewed as a production system or just individual plants, lines or machines. A productive unit is the smallest possible combination of people, material and machines that can still be productive. A finer subdivision is no longer makes sense from a business perspective, but productive are units of engineers and ergonomists more accurately considered and consequently as labor systems referred.

The relationships and interdependencies of a system are called infrastructure. If you apply certain selection criteria to these, you come to a subsystem. For example, you can take a closer look at the material flow or information system.

A special feature of a company's production system is that it only interacts with other sub-systems of the same company, such as the procurement, sales or financial system. These in turn are active in the company's environment - the procurement system on the procurement markets, the financial system on the capital markets or the personnel system on the labor market. They supply the production system with the necessary production factors such as manpower, machines, materials and energy or remove the finished products. The company management takes on a coordinating function, and is supported by other areas such as accounting or controlling. The entire company is also embedded in other environments, such as the technological, political-legal, economic, natural and socio-cultural environment.

Capacity and flexibility

→ Main articles : Capacity (economy)  and flexibility (business administration)

The most important properties of production systems include capacity and flexibility. Capacity is the ability to perform over a certain period of time. It is calculated as the product of the number of units (machines) available, the intensity with which they can be operated and the duration of their use. Flexibility is the ability to adapt to changing conditions. Quantitative capacity is understood to mean the amount that can be produced, while qualitative capacity is understood to mean the quality produced. Quantitative flexibility means the number of different operations to which a production system can be adapted, while qualitative flexibility means the time that is required for this. Existing capacity and flexibility should, if possible, correspond to the capacity and flexibility used. A production system is flexible if it can react to environmental changes in a timely manner and at a reasonable cost. If the capacity is too low, fewer products can be produced than could be sold; in the opposite case, capacity has been procured (and paid for) that is not used. Since rigid (inflexible) machines lead to lower unit costs, the flexibility should also meet the requirements. Since the product life cycles are getting shorter and shorter, different products have to be manufactured on one system over time, which results in increased flexibility of the systems procured. A rapidly changing environment in particular requires particularly flexible production systems. A distinction is made when it comes to flexibility

• if
• in which extensive
• how fast

Resources can be adjusted. For multipurpose machines, flexibility often relates to the number of possible tasks it can perform; for single-purpose machines, what matters is the cost structure; That is, how much do the costs change if more or less is produced. Functionally, the capacity is divided into

• Plant capacity
• Personnel capacity
• Procurement capacity

In terms of quantitative capacity, a distinction is made between the minimum capacity, such as the minimum output of a blast furnace in order to be able to operate it, the optimal capacity, at which the unit costs are lowest, and the maximum capacity.

Production types

The extremely diverse production systems encountered in business practice are differentiated in the literature, especially according to types of production . Different types of planning problems arise depending on whether it is, for example, individual, series or mass production or workshop, group or flow production. The solution of these problems and thus the most efficient possible configuration and control of production systems is the task of production management. The many different properties of production systems are classified according to whether they concern properties of the production program (products), the processes, or the production factors used.

Program-related production types

Also called output-related or output-oriented production types.

• Type of goods: Here, a distinction can be made primarily between material goods such as machines, devices, apparatus and immaterial goods, such as work, services, information and patents.
• Shape of the goods: Fluid goods have no geometrically defined shape (beer, gravel, flour), or only in one or two dimensions (in the case of rolling mills, the width and thickness of the sheets, but not the length); Piece goods are geometrically defined.
• Composition of goods: one-piece and multi-piece goods. Assembly processes are required for multi-part goods.
• Movement of goods: Movable or immovable products such as houses or factories. Some goods are only immovable during the production phase, but are movable after completion (large ships or aircraft). In both cases, it is necessary that all workers, materials and tools are brought to the construction site and not the workpieces to be processed, as is often the case, to the work sites.
• Number of different types of products: In single-product production, only a single good is offered and usually produced in very large numbers. With multi-product production, at least two different products are offered.
• Edition size:
  → Main article : Manufacturing type
  . Number of products manufactured. A distinction is made between mass, variety, series and individual production.
  • Individual production: Each product is manufactured once for a specific customer. Examples are bespoke tailors, manufacturers of special machines, plant construction or shipyards.
  • Series production: Several identical products are manufactured before the systems are converted to another, usually relatively different product type.
  • Variety production: It forms the transition to mass production. Many identical products are manufactured on the machines and systems before they are converted to products that are very similar.
  • Mass production: Here only a single product is manufactured in very large quantities.
• Relationship between production and sales market: (order type) The production can either be in stock for an anonymous mass market or triggered by orders from customers. Mixtures of both variants are often also possible, e.g. B. Anonymous production of the individual parts, but customer-specific assembly if different end products can be made from the same individual parts (modular principle). This is often the case in automobile production, for example.
• Relation to the objective of the products: Main products and by-products can be distinguished here. In a certain way, there are by-products such as exhaust gas, heat or waste in every production process.
• Desirability of the by-products: When slaughtering a chicken, z. B. a soup chicken as the main product and feathers as a desired by-product (as a pillow filling) and unusable slaughtering residues as an undesirable by-product.

Process-related production types

Also called throughput-related production types.

• Organization types: Here, a rough distinction can be made between workshop, group and flow production. For a closer look see production type
  • Workshop production: In workshop production, machines of the same type are grouped together in workshops (turning shop, milling shop, painting department). The products are passed on between the workshops until they have been finished. The great flexibility is an advantage here: One product can e.g. B. first turned and then milled, another milled first and then turned.
  • Group production: Also island, center or group production in different shades of meaning. One is a mixture of flow and workshop production.
  • Flow production: Here the machines are arranged in a fixed order and the products are passed on between the machines by conveyor systems. Flow production enables high quantities with little flexibility.
• Form of material flow: Also production structure type or vergence type. Describes whether several end products are manufactured from one raw part (analytical material flow), whether one end product is made from several raw parts (synthetic) or several end products are made from several raw parts (regrouping).
• Continuity of the material flow: A distinction is made between continuous processes that run uninterrupted - chemical production with pipelines, rolling mill - and those that have to be interrupted, as is necessarily the case with piece goods.
• Fixed location of the products: Here the construction site production - for immovable products - can be differentiated as fixed production compared to the usual locally non-bound production.
• Number of operations: single-stage, multi-stage or cyclical production. With single-stage production, only a single work step is required, with multi-stage production several. A special case is cyclical production, in which the company's products (output) are also used for their production (input) at the same time. Examples are a power plant that uses self-generated electrical energy to operate its own computer, a manufacturer of machines who produces with its own systems, or a farmer who stores part of the harvest as seeds.
• Changeability of the work sequence: Some products have to be processed according to a certain (technically) fixed sequence, with others the sequence of the work processes can vary.

Mission-related production types

Also called input-related production types. They distinguish features of production systems that relate to the factors of production .

• Share of input goods: Here a distinction is made between labor-intensive production and production that is equipment, material, information and capital-intensive.
• Consistency of goods production: There are fluctuations in quality (e.g. wines, leather goods), especially when processing naturally occurring materials.
• The input is related to the objective objective: Usually, goods are used and consumed for production that have a positive value. There are, however, very special production systems whose task it is to dispose of objects with a negative value (such as hazardous waste). Here we speak of so-called reducts that are to be eliminated - analogous to products that are to be produced.

Management concept

Individual companies have developed their own production systems in which they describe the general principles, standards, methods and tools that apply to the organization and the work and production methods in their company worldwide. The best known of these production systems is the Toyota Production System (TPS). In the meantime, many companies, especially in the automotive industry, have developed their own production systems, largely based on the principles developed by Toyota. Many of the principles, methods and tools that Toyota first introduced also underlie Lean Management .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Dyckhoff: Operational production. 1992, p. 11.
2. ^ Hans-Otto Günther and Horst Tempelmeier , Production and Logistics. 2003, p. 6.
3. ^ Dyckhoff: Basics of the production economy. , 1995, pp. 336f
4. ^ Dyckhoff: Basics of the production economy. , 1995, p. 344
5. ^ Corsten Hans, Gössinger, Ralf: Production economy . 13th edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, p. 10ff
6. ^ Günther, Tempelmeier: Production and Logistics. , 2003, p. 4
7. ^ Hans Corsten, Ralf Gössinger: Production economy. 12th edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, pp. 11–15. ISBN 978-3-486-58751-7 .
8. ↑ Harald Dyckhoff: Production theory: basics of industrial production management. 5th edition. Springer, Berlin 1994, pp. 336-346.
9. ^ Günther, Tempelmeier: Production and Logistics. 4th edition, Berlin, 1994, pp. 10-24
10. ↑ Herlyn: PPS in the automotive industry. 2012, p. 46 ff.