ABSTRACT
The increased turbulence of corporate environments for production enterprises is characterized by shortened product lifecycles and constantly increasing complexity of products and production processes. Customers demand smaller delivery lot-sizes with higher variance and shorter delivery times. Short lead times and the resulting need for fast reaction to dynamically changing environments play a major role in production planning and control (Wiendahl & Sontow 2006). Assembling, the final step of the production process has a great influence on compiling the predicted dates of delivery. However, studies showed that 20% to 60% of all applications conclude delayed (Evers 2002). The reasons for this are on the one hand the internal complexity of the assembly and on the other hand the high degree of disruption influencing the assembly.
