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This chapter will explain new processes designed to reduce the lost time between order entry and the scheduling of vehicles to the appropriate final assembly lines. Very often, this takes days and weeks. New order management and related systems must be able to directly process vehicle orders entered by the dealer or, in the future, by the customer themselves and assign them to suitable plants. This system, which substantially reduces the information flow times, is the “virtual order bank”, abbreviated to VOB, representing the central unit of the new order management system. Due to plant capacity constraints the VOB must not accept unlimited numbers of orders. It is necessary to first define the capacity of the final assembly plants and all BTO suppliers and have these data stored in the VOB. These capacity data do not refer to fixed values, but to capacity margins indicating minima and maxima, which are adapted for each product every 6 weeks. Based on these margins in the supply chain, the capacity buckets of the final assembly plants are defined on a daily basis before being assigned to orders arriving in the VOB. Apart from directly booking the capacity buckets, the network also buffers fluctuations in demand, making it more flexible. It is only possible to calculate a reliable delivery date after capacity buckets have been defined and an integrated available-to-promise (ATP) process put in place. The chapter will also show processes for capacity management to determine requirements and match them with the capacity available at the relevant companies across multiple levels of the supply chain. In selecting the plants, relevant factors such as costs, capacity and distance to final customer must be considered. Only then can the appropriate assembly plant for each individual customer order be processed and cars built and delivered within 5 days. |
