Open Access

Failure management in the production area has been intensely analyzed in the research community. Although several efficient methods have been developed and partially successfully implemented, producing companies still face a lot of challenges. The resulting main question is how manufacturers can be assisted by a sustainable approach enabling them to proactively detect and prevent failures before they occur. A high-resolution production system based on analyzed real-time data enables manufacturers to find an answer to the main question. In this context, Big Data technologies have gained importance since the critical success factor is not only to collect real-time data in the production but also to structure the data. Therefore, we present in this paper the implementation of Big Data technologies in the production area using the example of an actual research project. After the literature review, we describe a Big Data based approach to prevent failures in the production area. This approach mainly includes a real-time capable platform including complex event processing algorithms to define appropriate improvement measures.

In this paper, we firstly present a target system which is deduced to assess the economic profitability of reverse supply chains. Considering this, we analyse process reference models to define relevant components of an appropriate target system. Subsequently, we define applicable business models which are the basis for the manufacturer to offer new services to its customers on the one hand and to manage a goal-oriented return, recovery and resell of used products and components on the other hand. This will be done based on the morphology methodology in order to understand the characteristics and attributes of reverse supply chains.