Considering external and internal Cycles of a Manufacturer for Planning and Evaluating Production Technologies

Anticipating a production company's internal and external influencing factors is seen as key driver of the ability to act appropriately to sustain a competitive advantage within a dynamic market environment. In this connection, some factors within the production environment manifest as temporally and structurally recurring patterns (defined as cycles) and are predictable. Modeling and analyzing the cyclic behavior of products, technologies, and manufacturing resources, for example, facilitates a proactive planning approach to production technologies. This paper uses the example of the commercial vehicle industry to focus on a manufacturer's internal cyclic influencing factors. Based on the results of an industrial case study and a review of existing methods, a conceptual framework is presented for managing the complex interdependencies of the lifecycle of a product, its components, and production technologies. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.