Beschreibung
Today’s manufacturing planning methods usually focus on the technical components of a production system. Up to now, a systematic integration of individual skills of the production workers is not further considered, even though it bears high optimization potentials. This is critical especially for knowledge-intensive production processes (e.g. specialized vehicle construction) characterized by a high amount of variable and manual work steps to be performed. Even in such cases the influence of the competencies to the operational targets is not sufficiently taken into account. Against this background, a method has been developed allowing the systematic integration of person-specific competencies for process planning. The method was evaluated with a simulation model of a workshop production. The results illustrate that a systematic competence-enhancing planning leads to additional costs in short-term due o the higher effort for the training of production personnel ‘‘on the job’’. On the other hand, the long-term benefits of a competence-based process planning for workshop production were calculated by a Break-Even-Point. ‘‘Economies-of-skills’’ characterizing the resulting increased flexibility and greater work efficiency of the working personnel could be demonstrated.
