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DiIT CAO is an integral part of Yazaki’s “YESS” project, the Yazaki Enterprise Standard Solution, within which a homogeneous system environment with consolidated master data and standardised business and production processes has been established. Apart from cost reduction, prevention of double efforts and minimisation of stock levels, another goal of the project is to attain a high degree of flexibility, that according to Salim Siddiqi, CIO of Yazaki Europe, in the online version of „Logisitk Heute“ dated 25.07.2007, allows to “extend or move the production of supplier parts for a car line without problems in or to another plant”.

The aims of the projects – pathbreaking in times of crisis – have largely been achieved also because with CAO the standardisation of processes in the high-technology and capital binding cutting areas of 13 European plants could be made real.

 

The functions of CAO as a Manufacturing Execution System are extensive and complex and much more than simple progress control. This is apparent in CAO Optimisation, a detailed production planning that in the face of the current states in production - fully transparent in the system -, the possibilities of every individual machine and with a view to the overall production requirements and order deadlines, distributes and sequences orders in CAO in accordance with configured optimisation criteria.

 

The Machine Interface of CAO connects cut-and-crimp machines of different manufacturers to the system and makes them available online. It provides for the transfer of cutting orders and cut and crimp data directly into the machine controller, the supervision of every single setup action, the integration of quality requirements in the process, and the objective and un-biased acquisition of production and machine data on which meaningful and standardized reporting can be based.

 

The self-regulating Kanban cycle in CAO uses the SAP weekly demand as a nominal value and the CAO Kanban stock as the actual value to control on-demand production. Keeping the nominal value variable, the stock level is reduced to the required minimum. In future, the weekly demand supplied by SAP will be substituted by the number of Kanbans.

 

To make the Kanban stock - transparent in CAO - also visible in SAP and without delay, the CAO-SAP interface will be extended. Then, it will be possible to correct stock in CAO with functions in SAP. As another new feature, CAO will introduce product versions, that describe in the master data in which different ways a circuit can be produced.