Philipp Gneiting

Collaborative Planning Processes

In this chapter innovative flexible processes for inter-enterprise collaborative planning are presented. The processes support the industry’s requirement for both effective and efficient collaboration when planning capacities throughout BTO supply networks. This overcomes current process-related limitations. Collaborative planning processes span the whole integrated supply network. They are developed to support dynamic capacity allocation based on plant-specific constraints and to adjust plants’ profitable ranges to the current network context and individual capacity situation. Planning capacities in a collaborative way aims to optimise capacity utilisation corresponding to a current market situation. This chapter further presents computer-supported negotiations as a collaborative approach for decentralised capacity planning. Autonomous software agents serve as mediators between partners and perform negotiations. The concept of agents and their application as negotiators to facilitate the 5-day car vision are detailed in this chapter.

An Overview of Modular Car Architecture: the OEMS Perspective on Why and How

The diversification of an OEM’s model range serves to address as many customers as possible and thus cover as much of the market as possible. Here, the recognisable external difference between the cars therefore plays an important role in market positioning. However, the large number of variants also generates high cost; all part of mastering this complexity. One of the solutions to overcoming this problem is the use of common parts and modules across different models. The goal is to keep the internal complexity to a minimum whilst maintaining greater external variance, i.e. that which is visible to the customer. This chapter gives a brief overview from the OEM’s perspective and serves as an introduction to the other chapters in this section.