Manufacturing is the use of capital goods like tools, machinery and human labor to make things that can be sold or utilized from existing raw materials and components. The concept of manufacturing can refer to a range of human activity, from primitive crafts to fully automised technology, but is usually applied to the industrial production, in which materials are transformed into standardized finished products on a large scale. These products are then sold other users in the supply chain.

The manufacturing sector in South Africa includes the production of industrial goods, but also various utilities.

Auto experts discuss the state capital

Congress: Where are still productivity reserves

The well-running car economic outlook means that certain parts do not come in time to production. With the elimination of bottlenecks in manufacturing deals a congress in Saarbrücken.

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Saarbrücken. Did not last year upheld the admission numbers by government actions such as supporting the scrapping stand, the German car maker today thanks to good export performance as well again. "Currently, the companies the problem is that they do not have enough resources to become master of the orders at all," says Klaus-J. Schmidt (photo: SZ), owner of the Saarbrücken Institute for manufacturing Systems Logistics us (IPL), the problem. The IPL held until today, together with its partners a congress in Saarbrücken, the "more flexibility and efficiency in the automotive industry 'as its theme.

  As a partner network AKJ Automotive, the Society for manufacturing

Management (GfPM) and the FITT, the technology transfer office of Saarbrücken University of Applied Sciences (HTW) that are in the process.

"Nothing is as it was before the crisis," described GfPM-Chairman Koehler Albert the situation. The car makers fight "on several fronts. They need to meet stricter environmental regulations, take the electrification of mobility in attack and conquer emerging markets. The sap also on the capital base, which in turn would get to feel the main supplier because their cost would be questioned again. Suppliers from the second row are due to the crisis financially emaciated, so that they ask for extension of payment terms. Schmidt emphasized that the automakers in the long run, there remains nothing more than the suppliers' even more closely in their planning and manufacturing concepts. Only with more synchronization could still "superior synergies and reduce costs."

Another trend was clearly on the Congress that the automakers are once again investing heavily in the local sites, but there create the logistics so that considerable reserves of productivity are raised. Reinhard de Vries, head of plant and logistics control of Volkswagen in Wolfsburg, made this clear at the VW plant. There equips you for the manufacturing of the new Golf, which will run from the 2011 band. Only € 300 million would invest in a new stamping plant. Productivity should be increased through better integration of production processes at ten percent. The car will also be faster for customers. 50 days from order to delivery - for three days of pure production - "are just too long".

Others, like the Lenkteile supplier TRW beware of their machines to get better. A systematic maintenance "ensures a smooth manufacturing," said Ingo Thiem from the technical management of the TRW Automotive plant in Gelsenkirchen.