Transparency and Training in Manufacturing and Logistics Processes in Times of Industry 4.0 for Smes

Based on our experience from multiple projects in the areas of production planning, scheduling, and delivery reliability in collaboration with small and medium enterprises (SMEs), we know that employees continue to change the planned manufacturing sequence at their workstations. Thus the expected optimum of the production planning cannot be reached. We will discuss the influence of different employee behavior patterns on the overall production output. We have developed a planning tool for optimization of production planning in manufacturing SMEs by means of simulation. This planning tool can not only support planners and machine operators, but can also be used as a training tool for employees in addition to improving the production sequence. It uses behavioral patterns to increase learning effects and generate higher system understanding on the side of the employees. In this study we use a simulation model to prove the negative effects of specific behavioral patterns.