Approach to Tactical Planning for Manufacturing Innovation Projects

Rapid technological developments, shortened product life cycles, and constant competitive pressure require continuous efficiency improvements in producing material goods. Innovation is necessary to achieve these efficiency gains in manufacturing. Therefore, companies generate manufacturing innovation as part of the continuous improvement process or by absorbing external stimuli. As a result, tactical planning of innovation projects in manufacturing must be carried out regularly to enable resource planning and operative project implementation. The use of planning methods helps to increase the planning quality and reduce the complexity in the planning process. However, only a few approaches methodically support this tactical planning for manufacturing innovation. Therefore, an approach is developed using literature- and expert-based methods to systematically describe an innovation project in manufacturing, to identify and specify the relevant work contents, and finally to bring them into a defined processing sequence. In addition, the possibilities of individual planning steps being supported using tools and methods are shown. Finally, an industrial application of the approach is carried out, and a critical reflection on the results is presented. In summary, the systematic structuring of the planning process and the identification of available methods and tools improve the tactical planning of innovation projects in manufacturing.