Flexible Supply Network

Initial situation and objectives of the FlexNet

Today the information flow amongst the partners of a supply network is limited in its scope leaving a large number of partners uninformed about the actual demand and capacity situation and leading to a long time delay until the receipt of this vital data. As a consequence, the planning and control processes of each partner are incompatible and unsynchronised, making true collaboration of the network with focus on improved flexibility impossible and thus leading only to local optima. This results in long order-to-delivery times, large stockpiles of finished vehicles, systems and components, a high amount of “phantom costs” like discounts or lost sales, and reduced capacity utilisation of all companies in the network. Thus, one key aspect to achieving the target of a 5-day-car will be the improvement of the flexibility of all physical, informational, planning and control processes in the whole value chain.
Within ILIPT, “FlexNet” focuses on the concurrent development of new flexible processes, supporting ICT technologies and supply network organisation structures for the 2010 to 2015 time window in order to reach the 5-day-car target by realisation of a true build-to-order network. Its objective is to achieve a breakthrough in information and material logistics by radically reducing time lags, anonymous stock piles, and unused capacity in a dynamic automotive network environment. Based on this goal FlexNet designs new inter-enterprise collaboration processes for planning demand, production capacity in the supply network, for executing individual customer orders and for enabling a sophisticated monitoring and control of customer orders and their respective parts and components. Furthermore, new organisational structures with new roles and responsibilities for the stakeholders are designed in this context, especially for new tasks such as collaboration management or planning and control duties for a specific network segment. According to the requirements of the new planning and execution processes FlexNet develops moreover a concept for decentralised ICT systems in order to support the seamless and real-time information exchange between the stakeholders in a dynamic network.