Concept for modeling and quantitative evaluation of life cycle dynamics in factory systems

Against the background of the climate crisis, fast innovation space in emerging technologies and the global competitive environment for manufacturing companies, a sound understanding of the life cycle behavior of factory systems becomes more and more important. The decision context of the factory life cycle conveys a high level of complexity, e.g. by the heterogeneous nature of factory element life cycles, manifold interactions between them as well as external change drivers. A model-based understanding as well as methods and tools are required that support factory planners and operators in this regard. This paper presents an approach for the modeling and quantitative evaluation of life cycle dynamics in factory systems while respecting the dynamic behavior of factory operation, as well. The purpose of the modeling is to deepen the knowledge of the prevailing life cycle mechanisms and their implications for factory planning and operation. The application of the approach is demonstrated in an exemplary case study

Towards a Holistic Life Cycle Costing and Assessment of Factories: Qualitative Modeling of Interdependencies in Factory Systems

Modern factory planning requires a holistic perspective taking economic as well as environmental sustainability over the entire factory life cycle into account. As a complex socio-technical system, the factory life cycle consists of multiple life cycles of the inherent factory elements. A holistic understanding of the individual life cycles and their interdependencies is missing for both planning and operation of a factory. Therefore, the goal is to develop a system understanding about life cycle-oriented factory planning and to analyze the contribution of relevant factory elements to the sustainability of a factory. As a result, a knowledge base for life cycle costing and assessment of the entire factory is established using an impact path model. The qualitative model supports factory planners in deriving planning measures for the sustainable design of a factory and in determining data requirements for the quantitative evaluation of the economic and environmental sustainability of a factory. It shows that the production and logistics concepts essentially define the sustainability potential during planning, while the resulting life cycle behavior of the process facilities and workers is responsible for the majority of costs and environmental impacts of a factory. Factory planners must therefore become aware of the implications of planning decisions on factory operation when developing concepts in the future

A review of frameworks, methods and models for the evaluation and engineering of factory life cycles

Factories are complex systems, which are characterized by interlinked and overlapping life cycles of the constituent factory elements. Within this context, the heterogeneity of these life cycles results in life cycle complexity and corresponding conflicts and trade-offs that need to be addressed in decision situations during the planning and operation of factory systems. Also with respect to the transformation need towards environmental sustainability, there is a need for methods and tools for life cycle oriented factory planning and operation. This paper systematically reviews existing life cycle concepts of factory systems as well as frameworks, models and methods for the evaluation and engineering of factory life cycles. In order to respond to the above challenges, a general understanding about the factory life cycle, e.g. life cycle stages, related activities and interdependencies, is developed and action areas of life cycle engineering are discussed that could supplement factory planning. Following that, the paper presents an integrated, model-based evaluation and engineering framework of factory life cycles. © 2022 The Author

Evaluation of the influence of change drivers on the factory life cycle

Factories consist of numerous factory elements with individual life cycles. Besides technical aspects such as wear, their actual lifetime is influenced by change drivers from an increasingly dynamic market environment. As a result, factory elements may experience a premature end due to changed requirements before the end of their technical lifetime. The difficulty in factory planning is to understand the behavior of the life cycles in order to make management decisions. Therefore, the goal is to identify change drivers and evaluate their influence on the factory life cycle, while taking into account the technical functionality

Factory life cycle evaluation through integrated analysis of factory elements

In consequence of the technological advances of the last few decades, factories emerged to highly complex systems that consist of numerous factory elements like production machines, technical building services and the building shell. These factory elements are characterized by individual life cycles that differ in their duration and life cycle behavior. Consequently, the factory life cycle is composed of multiple overlapping life cycles. The fact that the life cycle of some factory elements (e.g. the building shell) exceeds the life cycle of other elements over many times (e.g. of machines) presents a challenge for factory planners. In particular, factory planners struggle to understand the contribution of single factory elements on the total factory life cycle. Consequently, it is hard to systematically synchronize the inherent life cycles of a factory while adhering to manifold requirements. Against this background, the goal of this paper is to develop a methodology that supports factory planners in the evaluation of the factory life cycle. The proposed methodology enhances the understanding of how factory elements contribute to the factory life cycle and what is the current life cycle state of the entire factory. To this end, the factory system is broken down on its constituting elements. A modified failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is applied to assess their life cycle priority according to economic, environmental and technical criteria. The methodology is exemplarily demonstrated on a pilot scale battery production system

General Approach and Prerequisites for Transferring Factory Planning Methods on Flow Orientation and Transformability to Hospital Systems

Manufacturing companies are faced with the challenge of operating cost-efficiently and remaining competitive in a turbulent environment with constantly changing demands on production. To meet these challenges, factory planning has developed concepts of flow orientation and transformability. Through decades of research, factory planners now have extensive methodologies and numerous principles, enabling them to design factory objects appropriately and align factories to be flow-oriented and transformable. Hospitals face similar challenges like manufacturing companies. Due to public funding, many hospitals have limited financial resources and must, for example, cover parts of their financial requirements by themselves through cost-efficiency. In addition, hospitals are influenced by ongoing developments like demographic change and recent challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic. These and further examples not only tighten the economic situation of hospitals, but also force their systems to adapt to resulting challenges. They must successfully align their systems to remain operational under changing conditions. In contrast to factories, these issues have not been addressed sufficiently in the field of hospital planning. Therefore, factory planning approaches on flow orientation and transformability will be transferred to hospital systems in order to strengthen hospitals against globally existing and socially relevant challenges in the healthcare system. With the aim to realise this venture, this paper presents a structured approach for its implementation. It also investigates the fundamental similarities between factories and hospitals and examines whether the main prerequisites for the successful transfer of the approaches can be met

Improving The Planning Quality Through Model-Based Factory Planning In BIM

In recent years, Building Information Modelling (BIM), which originated in the construction industry, is increasingly finding its way into the planning of factories and production environments. In the scientific assessment of this change and possible future scenarios regarding BIM, the research mostly focuses on the planning process and the influence that the use of BIM has on it. However, improving the outcome of a factory planning project enjoys priority over optimizing the planning process itself regardless of whether BIM is being used or not. This paper therefore aims to build a bridge from a process-side view to the planning result. The concept of BIM is to be explained from a technical point of view establishing a reference to the concept of synergetic factory planning. For this purpose, the process view and the spatial view will be examined and the BIM model will be characterized with regard to different levels of development in the planning process. The goal is to show how the use of BIM in factory planning can ultimately improve the planning result. For this purpose, the factory targets are considered and their optimizability through the use of BIM is investigated

Analysis Of Uncertainty Over The Factory Life Cycle

The cost and performance structure of a factory is determined in factory planning and activated in the operation phase with a time delay. Even though the majority of investments result from structural planning, the first conceptual and most important step in factory planning, the majority of costs occur during factory operation, the longest phase of a factory life cycle. Life cycle-oriented factory planning seeks to anticipate operation in order to increase the performance potential and reduce total costs over the entire factory life cycle. Experience shows that this can reduce total costs by about one-third, 80% of which are unplanned operating costs. Therefore, it is imperative to be aware of possible uncertainties in the course of a factory life cycle as a factory planner. Up to now, there has been an inconsistent understanding in this regard. By definition, the emphasis has been on long-term change drivers influenced by megatrends due to the strategic orientation of factory planning. The current crisis situation illustrates the relevance of an operational view on potential short-term uncertainties. The goal of the paper is to analyze the uncertainty over the factory life cycle in its entirety and to create a common understanding for factory planning so that life cycle-oriented planning and evaluation of factories can be aligned accordingly

Development of a Model for describing, evaluating and designing Communication Concepts in Factories in the Context of Industry 4.0

Far-reaching changes in the technical and organisational structure have influenced the communication between the elements of a factory. In particular, Industry 4.0 as a contemporary trend in production technology and many related areas of science places new requirements for communication. Thus, expectations comprise a wide variety of effects and potentials of Industry 4.0 on communication in factory systems. Exemplarily, efficiency and productivity increases are most frequently named as effects of industry 4.0. They seem advantageous by industrial enterprises, whereby the raising of these potentials is also a necessary competitive factor. However, such influences can trigger other effects with interdependent impacts on the components of factory systems. These effects can have both positive and negative impacts in factory systems. Still a comprehensive and generally valid description of these aspects is not yet available. Similarly, there is no understanding of the cause-effect relationships between the requirements for communication between the system components of a factory arising from Industry 4.0. The lack of specific understanding of Industry 4.0 caused effects and the cause-effect relationships between the requirements for communication between the factory system components lead to the inability to design effective communication concepts in factory systems. Therefore, existing communication systems remain exposed to undesired effects and leave desired effects underutilized. In order to close this research gap, a holistic model for the description, evaluation and the design of effective communication concepts in factories in the context of Industry 4.0 is in development within the frame of "Komm 4.0", a research project of the Institute for Production Systems and Logistics at Leibniz University Hannover and the WISSENSARCHITEKTUR Laboratory of Knowledge Architecture at TU Dresden. The pursuit of this research project is to describe and evaluate existing communication concepts, as well as design more effective concepts and to adapt previous recommendations in terms of communication concept design where necessary

Anticipatory Inventory Management For Realizing Robust Production Processes In Engineer-To-Order Manufacturing: A Modeling Approach

At ever shorter intervals, manufacturing and processing companies of all industries are confronted with external or internal disruptions and crises that need to be managed. Consequently, a corporate focus on robust supply chains and processes is essential. At the same time, crises and their impact on supply chains cannot be predicted. To be able to act anticipatively, it is necessary to link product and production system design to take suitable measures to safeguard production at an early stage. In this context, a monetary conflict of objectives arises concerning when a company should position itself robustly and when it is sufficient to react flexibly to disruptions. The production planning and control (PPC) task inventory management is an essential lever for realizing robust order fulfilment processes. Inventory management aims to ensure that production and assembly within the company are supplied in the right quantities and without lateness. In particular, companies that operate according to the engineer-to-order strategy (ETO) face specific challenges in dimensioning stocks for materials or components - for example, due to the low level of standardization or lack of supplier diversity. This paper presents an approach for anticipatory inventory management using product portfolio characteristics. A new modeling approach for dimensioning safety stocks under the increasing influence of crises is also developed and integrated into the process