EPEC 4.0: an Industry 4.0-supported lean production control concept for the semi-process industry

The combination of lean production and Industry 4.0 exhibits excellent potential in advancing operations management and, especially, production control. This improvement potential is applicable to the semi-process industry (S-PI), as higher product variety and higher demand variability require great...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Production planning & control 2022-10, Vol.33 (14), p.1337-1354
Main Authors: Spenhoff, Philipp, Wortmann, Johan C. (Hans), Semini, Marco
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cyber-physical systems
cyclic planning
cyclic scheduling
EPEC 4.0
Flexibility
Heijunka
Industry 4.0
Operations management
Perturbation
Production controls
Schedules
semi-process industry
Setup times
Stability
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Summary:The combination of lean production and Industry 4.0 exhibits excellent potential in advancing operations management and, especially, production control. This improvement potential is applicable to the semi-process industry (S-PI), as higher product variety and higher demand variability require greater flexibility from production systems. This flexibility is difficult to achieve in S-PI environments, in which it is imperative to cope with the long setup times and stability needed for the high utilization requirements. Heijunka addresses this stability-flexibility paradox but was designed for short setup times and is thus considered not directly applicable. In this article, we use design science research to adapt Heijunka to the S-PI and combine it with cyber-physical systems technologies. The developed production control concept, every product every cycle (EPEC) 4.0, aims to schedule the production system as efficiently as possible, providing the necessary flexibility and minimum schedule perturbation. Furthermore, we present the findings from a validation case study within the automotive supply industry.
ISSN:0953-7287
1366-5871
DOI:10.1080/09537287.2020.1864496