In today's competitive environment, manufacturing and service companies are intensifying their customization processes. Customization means companies must meet the challenge of providing individualized products and services, without introducing high costs. Therefore, companies must address both...

The ramp-up of a new product leads to changes and adjustments within the production and logistics system of a firm. This change process causes additional costs. The forecasting and planning of costs incurred during the ramp-up phase is still an unsolved problem within ramp-up management. In...

Although supply chain management has been discussed in both science and business for a long time a unified definition does not exist. That causes that the realization of supply chain management in business is very differential. A good approach to realize integrated supply chain management is to...

Recent economic developments indicated that greater flexibility in manufacturing is more important than ever and we consider flexibility as a key objective of many manufacturing systems. The ability to provide a certain degree of flexibility of production systems must be prioritized in future...