Optimization of Engineering Processes in Factory Planning

Currently, social media software is widely used for many fields but not yet in factory planning and specifically for cooperative planning processes and in the realization phase of production systems. Motivated by the growing potential of factory planning and the need to eliminate shortcomings within communication and cooperation during planning and realization of production systems, this paper describes a procedure and a prototype for supporting communication, collaboration and knowledge management in factory planning projects with social media technology. This procedure was developed in cooperation with the factory planners of Chemnitz University of Technology and the software specialists of the community4you GmbH. The procedure is based on a reference model and building blocks for planning assignments that can be used later on for different planning projects and planning cases. Thus, the existing methodology for factory planning will be extended, in this case by adding a procedure for communication and collaboration. A prototype is developed, following the guidelines of the mentioned procedure, and the building blocks are transferred to software modules.