Methodology for assessing the ability to control gobal value added networks

Considering average real net output ratios of about 20 - 30 % in the manufacturing sector, companies need to cooperate with other enterprises in organized networks during the manufacturing of products. As a consequence it is concluded that competition is no longer fought between individual companies but between competing supply chains. European companies are often central part of these supply chains or value added networks. The involved companies are faced with the challenge of controlling, influencing and optimizing the value added networks in the best interest of each company. It has not yet been clearly defined, through which measurements companies should control or develop their cooperation with other actors in the value added network. Companies can therefore no longer objectively assess the impact of their actions or the actions of network partners. The presented approach considers the target system based decision-making behavior of companies in networks, the description of cross-company production processes by means of key performance indicators as well as the characterization of improvement measurements as part of the description framework. The approach will be validated by using the agent-based simulation and modeling, which has been proved suitable to model the described characteristics of real value added networks, but has not yet been used to evaluate their controllability by the usage of different improvement measurements. This proposed research project will contribute to the fundamental understanding and control of globally distributed value added networks. This should be addressed to the facts that global value added networks have grown much faster in terms of importance, scope and complexity than the hypotheses and theories that are needed to describe them.

The amount of global acting value added networks is growing constantly. These networks are characterized by complex interconnections between the intragroup sites as well as the external partners. Based on the increasing complexity the involved companies struggle in their ability to manage and control their valued added networks.Currently there is no approach existing to evaluate the effects of improvement measures of an individual site on the overall performance of the value added network as well as on the other sites. Therefore, the aim of this research project was the development of a methodology for assessing the ability to control global value added networks using performance measurement and taking into consideration real decision-making structures as well as agent-based simulation.The methodology includes a performance evaluation of global value added networks using a developed performance measurement system with integrated individual target systems. It consists of five target dimensions cost time quality flexibility and sustainability, each assigned with specific measures connected hierarchically.Based on this performance evaluation, an approach for the identification of weak points and the derivation of improvement measures was developed, which examines effects of the networks overall performance.The developed description models were integrated into an agent-based, modularized simulation model to enable a dynamic evaluation. The modularized concept allows a high adaptability to individual network configurations being able to adapt the simulation model to individual use-cases.In a last step, two use-cases were implemented to validate the developed methodology. The findings were used to improve the methodology and the developed simulation model.To sum up, the project contributes to the research field of global value added networks. The established methodology enables the dynamic performance evaluation of global acting networks, which are characterized by individual target systems and complex supply connections.