PRODUCTION MANAGEMENT-SYSTEMS FOR ONE-OF-A-KIND PRODUCTS

The term "one-of-a-kind production" covers a diversity of industries. Therefore, this paper presents first of all a typology of one-of-a-kind production systems. The typology is based on two questions: Which part of the supply chain is customer-order driven? What investments in resources, products or processes have been made independently of customer orders? Next, the paper investigates key areas of management attention for several types in the typology with a focus on production management problems. These production management problems are related to information systems' requirements for different types. Finally, these different types of information systems are analyzed. It is concluded that: (i) information on customer-order specific products should be distinguished sharply from information on anonymous products; (ii) information systems in the customer-order driven part of the supply chain should first of all support the creation of customer-order specific information by qualified engineers; and (iii) large investments made in products or processes should be reflected in the information system by automatic generation of customer-order specific information.