Details:
Summary:
During 1997 a prototype of a global production management system was installed at the Swedish daily newspaper astgUta Correspondenten. The Intranet-based business wide system is now in daily use and covers the entire workflow - from the planning of the product and the production to the delivery of the newspaper copies. Several key activities and workflows in three different companies are linked to the same global production management system (GPMS). The IFRAtrack recommendation has been used in order to create standardised communication links. The production database and a file system with history data are linked to a web-server and the client software is mainly based on Java-technology. The GPMS co-ordinates the product, production and distribution planning, and tracks the production status of the different workflows in real time. The tracking data is used for decision support and in order to perform risk analyses and prognoses of delays. The implementation of the prototype was a complex task. The organisation was not used to global thinking, and the new IFRAtrack and Intranet based solution was not fully compatible with the old systems. The use of the GPMS has led to several changes at astgUta Correspondenten. The knowledge and understanding of the overall production process has increased. Decisions can be based on facts from a global point of view. The co-ordination of the different activities and workflows has been improved. New methods for developing fault tolerant production and distribution plans are used.