Companies in the Brainport region are often characterized as high mix low volume (HMLV) production environments. These companies are distinguished by a wide range of possible products (high product variety), which are produced in low volumes. These are often customer-specific products that are produced once or incidentally. Traditionally, these companies focus on efficient use of resources, where utilisation rate and cost coverage are relevant. The increasing customer demand in the region leads to pressure on production capacity. An initial intuitive response from these companies is to further increase the utilisation rate of machines. To keep costs manageable, the company tries to avoid investing in additional capacity. An undesirable side effect is increasing pressure on timeliness (delivery, such as lead times, delivery reliability, flexibility) and quality.
The apparent contradiction between costs and timeliness in these HMLV production environments is a recurring issue in practice-oriented research conducted by Fontys Industrial Engineering and Management students. This results in the following research question: Which sub-aspects may be relevant to the performance regarding Quality, Delivery, and Cost (QDC) of an HMLV production environment?
