RampAble - Design of ramp-up capable production systems

A very dynamic business environment and strong market competition are leading to significantly shorter product lifecycles with a simultaneous increase in the number of products in demand. Therefore, manufacturing companies are currently confronted with the challenge of having to integrate an ever increasing number of new products into their production systems in ever shorter periods of time.

 Small and medium-sized enterprises in particular are finding it difficult to master this integration, the so-called start-ups, due to a lack of experience, competences and strategies in connection with this integration. In many cases, this leads to a delay in production startup and delayed market entry. The compensation of the resulting economic disadvantages leads to a considerable increase in expenditure. In particular, therefore, no and medium-sized companies run the risk of losing their competitiveness due to their limited resources.

 The RampAble research project aims to provide manufacturing companies with a tool for dealing with start-ups.

 The first step is to determine the basis for this in the form of requirements that a production system has to meet before it can be started up. These start-up capabilities form the basis for the development of a methodology for assessing the start-up capability of production systems, for the development of a catalogue of measures for the targeted increase of the start-up capability of production systems and for the development of a procedure for the planning of start-up capable production systems. In the final step, the evaluation methodology, catalogue of measures and planning procedure are integrated into a software package that not only makes it possible to evaluate and design the start-up capability of production systems, but also to plan them proactively.

 By implementing the research results in a software, the company responds to the need, especially of small and medium-sized companies, for an application-oriented and application-specific tool for dealing with start-ups in the company.