Tools for the Creation of a Fractal Company

The marginal restrictions on manufacturing have changed considerably, especially during the past five years. In order to be successful, today's business have to stand up to turbulent market conditions in which large and frequent fluctuations in sales and demand lead to higher pressure in competition and price determination. Many tactics have been applied to prepare companies for these challenges. Some firms have introduced a cost reduction scheme or have been through one or more re-engineering programmes. Successful companies have made initial steps towards finding and introducting new organistaional structures. The inception of the fractal factory has been proved to be a very successful policy. In the fractal factory the role of each worker has been newly defined. Fractals are created to provide each worker with a wider scope of responsibility and duties in a less hierarchical organisation. Through a target system, a framework is given in which each fractal and each worker is able to organise himself/herself with more autonomy. In order to aid the application of the fractal principle the Fraunhofer IPA has developed the IPA Business Took-kit, an object-oriented method, which enables the user to carry out coordinated modelling, planning, simulation, optimization and realization. The operational potential of this system includes the following: - The presentation of technical methods, business processes and other organizational events supporting the fractal structure. By visualizing existing structures and building up on them using simulation, it is possible to create new forms of fractals optimized to suit the planned situation. - The compilation of product and software specifications required for the project on hand. Assuming that a system expansion or a new software development has already been decided upon, it is then possible to initiate the software engineering process with this toolkit. The formation of generic masks and the direct derivation from the source co de is also feasible