Innovation and product cycles are getting shorter all the time, and new production technologies are putting pressure on manufacturing companies to react more and more rapidly and make quick investment decisions regarding both consumer goods and investment goods. In order to confront this trend and avoid lengthy investment decisions, companies are starting to increase the network of their production capabilities beyond their own company boundaries.

Key aspects
The Order-Controlled Production application scenario describes a flexible manufacturing configuration. Owing a network of production capabilities and capacities that extend beyond factory and company boundaries, this company can quickly adapt to a changing market and order conditions, and thereby make the best use of capabilities and capacities of existing production facilities. In this way the potential provided by a network to other factories out-side of the company’s own facilities is used to align the company’s own portfolio - and especially its production - to quickly changing customer and market demands. Specifically, manufacturing chains are optimized for various parameters, such as cost and time.

At its core, order-controlled production is based on standardization of the individual process steps on the one hand and the self-description of production facility capabilities on the other hand. This standardization allows for auto-mated order planning, allocation and execution, thereby considering all production steps and facilities required. This helps to combine individual process modules much more flexibly and earlier than previously possible, and to make use of their specific capabilities.

In this respect, companies offer their available production capacities to other companies and thereby increase the utilization of their own machinery. Other companies may access these capacities as needed, thereby temporarily expanding their own production spectrum. In so doing, available production capacities are utilized better and order fluctuations can be smoothed out. The goal is to facilitate linking external factories into a company’s production process, as automated as possible. In particular, the order placement process required for this should be executed automatically.

Effect on value chains
Today’s relatively rigid and separately negotiated relation-ships between companies along the value chain will be transformed into a largely fragmented and dynamic value chain network that changes as required by the individual order. This applies both horizontally over the entire manufacturing process as well as vertically, with regard to production depth. Manufacturing companies focus on value-added steps that distinguish them significantly from other competitors. The possibility of creating fast and global client-manufacturer relationships can lead to unexpected competitive situations, because companies may change their role from order to order. Dynamically integrating production capacities will lead to better machine utilization and, as a result, diminishing demand for machinery suppliers.

Value added for participants
On the one hand, manufacturing companies will be able to automatically expand their production capabilities and capacities ad hoc in line with demand, by utilizing external production modules. No investment is required. This enables companies to react very flexibly to changing market and customer demands. On the other hand, companies offering their machines on the market can optimize their utilization rates.