Order Management by means of the 3Litre-PPC-Concept

The growing interest of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in cooperating with other businesses of their size shows that SME have difficulties in coping with current demands on manufacturing enterprises in Germany. Their co-operation efforts take shape as company associations, co-operation linkups or as company networks. By collaborating in networks SMEs are not only able to achieve the same market power and economies of scale as large companies, they also maintain the typical flexibility and speed of response of a small enterprise along with its proximity to customers. This kind of agility and dynamics can only be accomplished through process and employee oriented manufacturing structures. To ensure the successful market performance of a manufacturing enterprise it is essential to introduce decentralised, autonomous organisational units which make production more transformable and adaptable. The use of advanced information and communication systems helps to decentralise producti on and, at the same time, enables to make it an integrated part of an open manufacturing network