Fertigungseinheit

Fertigungseinheit is a term used in manufacturing and production management to denote a defined organizational unit within a company’s production system that is responsible for performing a set of manufacturing tasks. It groups resources such as machinery, tools, and personnel assigned to a specific process stage or product family. A Fertigungseinheit can be a single machine, a work cell, a production line segment, or a combination of stations that together fulfill a defined manufacturing function.

The unit serves as an aggregation and planning element. It is used for capacity planning, load balancing, scheduling, and performance measurement. By assigning work to a Fertigungseinheit, companies can track throughput, downtime, changeover times, and yield at a granular level, facilitating bottleneck analysis and continuous improvement. In enterprise systems, Fertigungseinheiten are often modeled as work centers or production cells within ERP or MES software, and can be linked to bill of materials, routings, and production orders.

Examples: A welding cell in an automotive plant, a subgroup of assembly stations forming a subline, or a painting booth with its own handling equipment can be considered a Fertigungseinheit.

Note: The exact meaning and granularity of Fertigungseinheiten vary by company and software. Some systems equate Fertigungseinheit with a work center, while others distinguish between a work center and a Fertigungseinheit as a higher-level organizational unit.