The right amount of versatility for any business
Companies that are versatile and can changing market and environmental conditions respond rapidly in the global economy have a strategic competitive advantage over the competition. In Project DyWaMed the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI has for the first time empirically detected based on a survey of more than 200 high-tech companies, such as adaptability potential can be measured and what measures are appropriate to sustainably increase the adaptability of enterprises. The results were summarized in a brochure and also be in the form of an online benchmarking tools.
Today, production systems are largely planned under the impression of growing and rapidly changing customer requirements in terms of quantity, quality and ability to deliver. Although these are very flexible in the short term given the leeway, they often have very high fixed costs and can only be adapted in the long term with great effort. The financial crisis at the latest showed that this "planned flexibility" is not only expensive, but is not sufficient, especially in times of economic turbulence. Instead of just maintaining flexibility for given structures on suspicion, companies must also develop the ability to adapt structurally to changed framework conditions quickly and with little effort - i.e. build up the ability to change. However, equipment with a suitable potential for versatility does not come free of charge and always requires a certain degree of flexibility.
In order to find the right balance between flexibility that can be used in the short term and the ability to change in the long term, suitable methods and an adequate data basis are required to assess one's own position and potential. Both are provided by the DyWaMed project (development of a simulation-based tool for dynamic control of the adaptability of integrated value chains in medical technology). In the project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Fraunhofer ISI developed a model that enables the measurement of adaptability using specific strategic target values such as volume, number of variants or the throughput time of the products. For this purpose, 210 medical, measurement, control and regulation technology and optics companies were interviewed in detail by telephone about their current adaptability potential and the technical and organizational enabling concepts used by them in this context were recorded. "For the first time, an empirical database for measuring the adaptability potential of manufacturing companies is made available, the results of which also allow interesting assessments for other sectors," explains project manager Oliver Kleine.
The most important results of this study have now been summarized in the brochure "Measuring and benchmarking adaptability". The full results of the survey are available in an online benchmarking tool: Here, interested companies can individually analyze the strengths and weaknesses of their operational flexibility and adaptability compared to other companies and thus uncover targeted approaches to increasing their adaptability and competitiveness. In order to ensure comparability, each company can "tailor" itself a suitable comparison group from the entirety of the companies surveyed, which is as similar as possible to its initial conditions and general conditions, and measure itself against this in a specific and goal-oriented manner. The results are displayed online and made available at the same time as a detailed pdf result report.
The brochure "Measuring and benchmarking adaptability" can be found atwww.dywamed.de/dywamed/content/projekt/veroeffentlichungen.php> can be downloaded free of charge. Online benchmarking is available for a fee atwww.dywamed.de/benchmarking> be reached.
Source: Karlsruhe [ ISI ]
