Lehmann, Frank, "A System View of the Design of Modern Manufacturing Systems", 1996

A Systems View of the Design of Modern Manufacturing
Systems

Frank Lehmann
Industrieseminar der Universitaet Mannheim
D - 68131 Mannheim, Germany

Phone: (+49 621) 292-1465 Fax: (+49 621) 292-52 59
e-mail: fl@is.bwl.uni-mannheim.deABSTRACT

Abstract

The design of modern manufacturing systems is often discussed under the
viewpoint of short term effectiveness and efficiency. The demands for the
production system are often mono-causal and directly derived from the goals of the
production, marketing, and material management. Due to the objective setting
processes of those sectors the impact of the manufacturing system to the other
members of the supply chain and the long term consequences for the own firm are
rarely taken into consideration. To look at production systems from the point of a
system viewer includes the necessity not only to take into account the direct effects
of a decision like quality, costs, etc. Also the issues to and from other parts of the
system like the members of the supply chain and the long term effects should be
taken into the decision process. Therefore information about the connections and
the effects of these parts of the system are required. The structure of the
production system and the connections to other parts in the firm and to the
members of the supply chain are a good source for this information. The
complexity of this system makes it necessary to design a simulation model, which
can show the effects from the design of modern manufacturing systems to the firm
and the supply chain. The presentation discusses the core structure and the basic
results of a Vensim model, which is designed to inspect these aspects of modern
manufacturing systems. After that a short view is taken on the possibilities and
limits of modelling production systems in System Dynamics generally and on the
problems to design a simulation model that shows short term consequences as well
as long term loop-back results.

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