A Human Oriented Approach to the Introduction of Task Appropriate Computer Support on the Shop Floor

HOPE - KIT114

Keywords: shop floor control, production management, SMEs, learning enterprises

Start Date: 1 October 94 / Duration: 36 months

Objectivies and Approach

Today products are being designed in Italy, engineered for production in Germany and produced in Brazil. Advances in information technologies and improving communications infrastructures support the trend towards the globalisation and the customisation of products and processes. IT based shop floor monitoring and control (SCM) systems provide important tools to realise this in practice. This project will analyse Brazilian demands in SCM, will inform Brazilian researchers and managers about SCM philosophies, strategies and existing computer aided solutions. It will train and qualify Brazilian people to specify, select and introduce task appropriate SCM systems, and will install an SCM-application laboratory in Brazil to assist in the local implementation of SCM systems.

Progress and Results

In the analysis phase, a questionnaire was sent to Brazilian SME's in order to evaluate their needs in IT based shop floor monitoring and control. The evaluation of the received answers led to some restrictions regarding the choice of adequate SCM-Software for Brazil. For example:

many companies need stand-alone solutions because they don't have PPC-Systems,
many companies need network running versions of data base systems,
SMC-Systems must have strategies for production planning which support kanban, just-in-time etc., and
an interface between SMC-and CAD/CAM-Systems is necessary for companies with mechanised production.

Information Dissemination Activities and/or Exploitation

An SMC laboratory is being set up for training in Brazil. The topics of the workshop will include reports on experiences with SMC-Systems in Brazilian companies and in the SMC-laboratory for training. A paper is being prepared for the MCPL'97 conference which will take place in Campinas-SP-Brazil from 31.08.97 until 03.09.97. An open workshop will be held at BIBA in Europe at the end of the KIT action.

Coordinator

BIBA
Hochschulring 20
28359 Bremen, D

EU Partners

BIBA, D
VSS GmbH, D
Tecnologica Energia Ambiente Materioli, Ispra, I

Non-EU Partners

GRUCON, University of Santa Catarina, BRZ

CONTACT POINT

Dipl. Inf./Dipl.Soz.Päd. F. Zsack
Tel: +49 421 218 02
Fax: +49 421 218 55 10/2200979
E-mail: zsa@biba.uni-bremen.de