Increasing Ramp-up Performance By Implementing the Gamification Approach

Rapid product lifecycles and a growing product range lead to an increasing number of production ramp-ups. This basically leads to an increasing importance of efficient ramp-up processes, reducing ramp-up costs and ramp-up time become more and more the focus of attention. Furthermore, linked to the decreasing quantities, there is a growing importance of low volume productions, characterized by low automation level and high work contents. One of the most important key challenges in ramp-up of low volume production systems is the qualification of employees. The training process is usually set up in accordance with the Four-Step-Model, a state-of-the-art method for training in the context of production developed decades ago under different circumstances in production. In order to meet the actual market challenges, a new method is required. For a few years the Gamification Approach has become more and more apparent. In a new approach, Gamification is used in order to improve learning efficiency in production ramp-up. For this purpose the four step model is extended by a new one, the Gamification Step. The new model is the basis for a game which has been developed in cooperation with a German car manufacturer. The purpose of the game is to increase the efficiency in learning the assembly sequences.