Requirements upon human competencies in globally distributed manufacturing

Today, enterprises operate in a tremendously competitive environment characterised by a number of changed business conditions. These comprise the trend to global and transparent markets, the rise of mass customisation, and reduced product life cycles. Competence in the optimal use of information and communication technologies supporting a global cooperation of enterprises will be a future key to industrial countries remaining competitive in both the race for bringing new products to market and in sustaining a profitable presence in the market. However, old production management paradigms and the related production engineering curricula are limited by their single-site, internal orientation, based on the assumption of a predictable external environment in which suppliers and customers are dealt with on a transactional basis rather than in relationships for mutual benefit. The emergence of a more global economy in both supply and demand, coupled with ever-increasing availability of new information and communication technologies, calls for a consequent application of these technologies and the development of related qualification concepts. To fill this gap, a project called `Methods and Technologies to Support Global Manufacturing' has been launched at the University of Bremen. After discussing the industrial change towards globally distributed manufacturing, the requirements on the education of production and economic engineers will be derived. The overall approach of this interdisciplinary project will be presented in this paper.