Introduction Of A Concept For Planning And Controlling Multi-Project Environments In Factories

Abstract

Today more than ever, companies are forced to regularly initiate projects in their factories in order to ensure competitiveness through constant adaptation and change. Such projects are controlled and managed individually. Implementing many projects frequently leads to situations however, in which different projects overlap regarding their planning and control. Deviation in the projects’ duration and scope further intensifies this effect. To manage environments consisting of projects with different scopes and timelines, companies make use of models for multi-project management (MPM). Due to their aim for general validity, existing models for MPM generally lack a specific focus on the targets and tasks of the factory environment. A new process model is therefore needed to effectively and efficiently plan and control a multi-project environment in the factory. Therefore, the project context and the interdependencies of the model’s tasks shall also be taken into account. In order to build a process model for multi-project management, according to the requirements of the factory, insights from MPM as well as the production environment are needed. In this article an overview of the approach is given and first findings are presented. Based on analogies between models of MPM and production planning and control (PPC), an exemplary excerpt of a combined know-how catalogue is shown, laying the foundation for the further development of a holistic process model.