Supporting long-term production development : Towards production platforms

Sammanfattning: With shrinking product life cycles and increasing competitive pressure, the traditional way of developing production systems is becoming obsolete. A longer-term perspective that considers the stream of product realisation projects to be implemented in the production system over its lifetime is required. Because of the success of different platform strategies in the product domain, platforms in the production domain are deemed a viable avenue for exploration to reach longevity in production capabilities. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to support a long-term view of production development through production platforms. This aim is addressed through two research questions (RQs). RQ1 is ‘What challenges and enablers exist for long-term production development?’ and should identify hindrances and good practices towards reaching long-term production development. RQ2 is ‘How can a platform approach support long-term production development?’ and describes how a platform approach for long-term production development could be. Four studies were conducted and reported in the four appended papers. The research is based on an interactive research approach with three empirically-based studies and one systematic literature review. The findings indicate that production development is conducted from a short-term perspective. Several challenges were identified regarding long-term production development, as well as the fact that the use of production platforms is not applied in industry. Further, the production platform literature is found to be still rather limited but it has been concluded that production platforms are an approach to describe the production system and its assets to facilitate reuse. Support for achieving long-term production development is presented, including production capability mapping (PCM) support. PCM support enables platform descriptions to be generated and used as a foundation in long-term production development to create a production system that possesses a higher ability to absorb changes.