Final Meeting of the AIF Research Project PrEPFlow
Within the last two years, the research project PrEPFlow has dealt with real-time capable bottleneck prediction in directed material flow systems by machine learning methods. One of the results is the catalog of measures for handling dynamic bottlenecks, which was created in cooperation with the companies of the Project Advisory Committee (PA). During the final meeting at Albrecht JUNG GmbH & Co. KG, the catalog was shown and discussed for the first time. As a highlight, the total of 15 participants of the PA took a look at the production site in Schalksmühle. Here it could be shown which data points are necessary for a successful, data-based bottleneck analysis. JUNG has implemented the Dynamic Value Stream Analysis (DWSA) in the socket assembly in cooperation with IPS engineers GmbH and evosoft GmbH, which accesses precisely these data points. Thus, the implementation of the bottleneck analysis into the DWSA was discussed during the final meeting. Here, too, illustrative impressions from the DWSA were presented to the participants.
An IT tool for bottleneck analysis has also been developed in the research project. This will be made publicly available in the coming weeks. The tool is suitable for the integration of bottleneck identification and forecasting into the IT systems of manufacturing companies. Along the four steps Detection, Diagnosis, Prediction, Prescription (West et. al 2021) the tool guides users through a successful bottleneck analysis in the future. The PrEPFlow project has developed the two steps detection and prognosis. If interested, the Institute of Production Systems and the RIF Institute for Research and Transfer e.V. will support the application and integration of the IT tool in their material flow system.
The RIF project team would like to express their sincere thanks to Albrecht JUNG GmbH & Co. KG for the excellent hospitality. Furthermore, special thanks go to all participating companies of the PA, who were available to the project team with advice and support. The project team would like to conduct further research on the topic of bottleneck analysis in the future. If you would like to participate, please contact Jörn Schwenken (+49 231 755 5187).