A New Framework to Evaluate the Process Capability of Production Technologies during Production Ramp-Up

The frequency of market launches of new products increases constantly due to ever shorter product life cycles. This leads to an inevitable rising number of production ramp-up processes. During the ramp-up insufficient process capabilities of the deployed production technologies is one of the main reasons for disturbances. This publication reviews existing approaches with regard to their ability to support the technology selection during ramp-up with a particular focus on process capability. Further, a new selection criterion is introduced as “technology capability” which is defined as the estimated capability of a production technology in case of a production ramp-up. Afterwards, a decision framework is created to select case specifically the most suitable approach for technology selection. Finally, a new approach is presented to comprehensively integrate technology know-how into the evaluation and selection process by using scientific models. The approach is presented by the example of a hard turning process.