Production Planning and Scheduling and SME

Authors: M. Heck, H. Vettiger

Abstract:

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) are the backbone of central Europe’s economies and have a significant contribution to the gross domestic product. Production planning and scheduling (PPS) is still a crucial element in manufacturing industries of the 21^st century even though this area of research is more than a century old. The topic of PPS is well researched especially in the context of large enterprises in the manufacturing industry. However the implementation of PPS methodologies within SME is mostly unobserved. This work analyzes how PPS is implemented in SME with the geographical focus on Switzerland and its vicinity. Based on restricted resources compared to large enterprises, SME have to face different challenges. The real problem areas of selected enterprises in regards of PPS are identified and evaluated. For the identified real-life problem areas of SME clear and detailed recommendations are created, covering concepts and best practices and the efficient usage of PPS. Furthermore the economic and entrepreneurial value for companies is lined out and why the implementation of the introduced recommendations is advised.

Keywords: Central Europe, PPS, Production Planning, SME.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI): doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1337351

References:

[1] K. Kurbel, Produktionsplanung und -steuerung im Enterprise Resource Planning und Supply Chain Management. München, Wien: Oldenbourg, 2005.
[2] P. Dickmann, Schlanker Materialfluss mit Lean Production, Kanban und Innovationen. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2007.
[3] J. Womack, D. Jones, Lean Thinking – Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation. London: Simon & Schuster, 2003.
[4] M. Rother, Toyota Kata – Managing people for improvement, adaptiveness, and superior results. New York, Chicago, San Francisco: McGraw Hill, 2010.
[5] E. Goldratt, Theory of Constraints. Great Barrington, Massachusetts: North River Press, 1990.
[6] European Commission, The new SME definition. User guide and model declaration. Retrieved August 3, 2013 from http://ec.europa.eu/.
[7] U. Dombrowski, T. Lacker, S. Sonnentag, Modernisierung kleiner und mittlerer Unternehmen: Ein ganzheitliches Konzept. Berlin, Heidelberg, New York: Springer-Verlag, 2009.
[8] A.-W. Scheer, E. Brabänder The Process of Business Process Management. International Handbooks on Information Systems 2010, pp. 239-265, 2010.
[9] J. Verville, A. Halington, A six-stage model of the buying process for ERP software. Industrial Marketing Management 32, pp.585-594, 2003.
[10] D. Sammon, F. Adam, Justifying an ERP Investment: Critical Success Factors for Transformation Investments. International Conference on Information Systems, ICIS 2008 Proceedings, 2008.
[11] P. Hanafizadeh, R. Gholami, S. Dadbin, N. Standage, The Core Critical Success Factors in Implementation of Enterprise Resource Planning Systems. International Journal of Enterprise Information Systems, 6(2), pp. 82-110, 2010.
[12] J. Muscatello, M. Small, I. Chen, Implementing enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in small and midsize manufacturing firms. International Journal of Operations & Production Management Vol 23 No. 8, pp. 850-871, 2003.
[13] J. Becker, M. Kugeler, M. Rosemann, Prozessmanagement – Ein Leitfaden zur prozess-orientierten Organisationsgestaltung. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2008.