Integrating Human Aspects in Production Management

In recent years the situation of production enterprises has been aggravated by the change from a vendors' market to a buyers' market, the globaHsation of competition, a severe market segmentation and rapid progress in product and process technologies. Beside cost and quality, time has taken on an increasingly important role, forcing enterprises to become ever more dynamic and versatile. Therefore, in all areas of production management, novel, effective concepts, procedures and tools have been developed in order to meet these new requirements. But beyond these more technical, organisational and information technology related aspects there is certainly another one which has to be considered more closely than ever before, namely that of human resources. Is not group technology also related to group work? Do partners in a global network only operate according to predefined process schemes with no personal contact? Are the mental process models of the programmers of ERP-systems the same as those of the users? What is the impact of human behaviour and what consequences are to be expected if organisational and individual objectives are separated? And finally, how do necessary technological changes affect the workforce and the individual needs and wishes of the employees.

This book is composed of six parts, each focusing on a specific theme: Human Resource Planning; Human Aspects in the Digital Factory; Human Aspects in Production Planning & Control; Knowledge Management; Management of Distributed Work; and Service Engineering. The included papers were presented at the IFIP International Working Conference "Human Aspects in Production Management." Following this conference, the papers were extended by the authors and passed a peer review process.

All professional and academic researchers in the field of production management will find this book essential.