Impact of Customer Order Change Dimensions on Order Management

Today, manufacturing companies are surrounded by constantly changing external influences. These entail the risk of inefficiencies in the operational process, especially when existing plans have to be adapted. A common trigger of such modifications are customer order changes. They cause unplanned costs, which endanger the profitability of the company. However, the estimation of these additional costs is complex and therefore missing in today’s operation. This paper therefore defines customer order change types and determines their effects based on the Aachener PPS-Model. The individual processing areas of a customer order are described and mathematically formulated. Agent-based simulation is used to evaluate the critical change dimensions. Simulation experiments showed that the additional costs generated due to customer order changes decrease if the average relative date and quantity change are reduced. If both change scopes are reduced equally, in the case of reducing quantity, the additional costs are a slightly higher than in the case of reducing date change.