Technology assessment within product, technology and factory planning under consideration of lifecycles.

In the past, coordination between the respective planning departments for product, technology and factory development was easier to handle, due to nearly identical lifecycles of these disciplines. Meanwhile, this movement has changed: product lifecycles abbreviate faster than those of production technologies and also factory buildings. Rescheduling or new planning takes place at different times and this causes various effects which lead to high planning costs. At the Institute of Production Engineering and Machine Tools (IFW) of the Leibniz Universität Hannover a methodology has been developed, that enables an intensive connection of the three mentioned planning fields by means of roadmapping. For this purpose a technology planning method has been integrated, that allows to assess lifecycle costs and lifecycle benefit. Associated with the resulting improvement of synchronization and assessment, quality of planning results ascends and planning costs decrease.