Design of a model to assist in aligning engineering and production environments

Abstract

Background of project problem Denel Dynamics is a well established Engineering company, specializing in the design and production of missile and other electronic devices. Development at Denel Dynamics continuously improves along with new technology, knowledge and resources. It is extremely difficult to align development and production in such a dynamic environment. This implies that planning for future production, while still designing and developing the product, is almost impossible. The result of this could cause unstable panning baselines leading to waste of resources, labor and material. A solution to stabilize planning is urgently needed. Goal and Scope of Project Denel Dynamics’ aim is to make the interaction between the Engineering and Production Departments as effective as possible. The result would be improved future production planning and help managing the point in time to transfer the Bill of Materials, BOM, between departments. A model must be created which could contribute to the proposed solution. This will enable intelligent future production planning taking instabilities and risks from Engineering into account and managing part maturity to determine when a BOM could be transferred.