Parts which inherently store data about their fabrication and find their own way through the production, or, machine components that autonomously monitor themselves and arrange inspections as required may still sound like a vision of the future. Nonetheless, in the Collaborative Research Centre 653 'Gentelligent Components in their Lifecycle-Utilisation of Inheritable Component Information in Production Engineering' they will soon be a reality. Transferring characteristics that are similar to those found in nature to industrial production will lead to a paradigm shift in the development and manufacturing of prospective components. This paper presents the techniques and methods that enable this new approach in production engineering by transferring biological principles from the field of genetics into the manufacturing environment.

The success of companies with job shop production strongly depends on their production flexibility. This is often significantly influenced by the process planning and production control. Aiming at maximizing production flexibility, this paper presents an approach to further integration of process planning and production control by combining and optimizing already existing planning methods. Essentially, in a rough planning stage, all process chains which are technological relevant to the manufacturing of a given product are taken into consideration. Applying a dynamic multi-criteria evaluation to all process chains ensures that the most appropriate, situation-specific process chain is chosen for production. This is done based on pre-established production targets, which facilitates a flexible response to incidents and other unplanned production events. The structure and functionalities of the presented approach are thoroughly explained in this paper and its feasibility is demonstrated with an example.

An actual analysis in the tool and mould making sector showed that methods and programs insufficiently support the manufacturers of pressure die casting moulds in the quotation costing process. The primary aim of quotation costing is to generate many first-class bids in order to gain a high quantity of profitable orders. For this purpose companies have to achieve a high calculation precision with low expenditure. In addition, a comprehensible calculation is of great importance in order to enable an internal and external comparability and analysis as well as to permit the customer to assess the performance offered. In order to support companies of the tool and mould making concerning these matters, a working group from industry and science analyzed the quotation costing made by manufacturers of pressure die casting moulds. The article discusses the results of this analysis and describes the development of a rule-based calculation approach.The generation of first-class supplies is of special importance for enterprises of the tool and mould making sector since the fast submission of qualified offers represents the prerequisite for competitiveness [1]. At the same time, the calculation of an estimated price is, as a rule, carried out free of charge. For this reason, the creation expenditure of bids should not increase proportionally with the precision [2]. Apart from the demand for an effort-free creation with simultaneously high calculation quality, the qualitative representation of the performance profile represents another important task in the area of quotation costing. It is decisive for the success of a bid to communicate the competence of the company to the customer. A convincing technical description of the mould with logically presented costs supports an easy internal and external evaluation. It enables the customer to judge whether the offered conditions are superior to those of competitors regarding price and performance [3].Since present concepts and programs do not offer a sufficient solution for manufacturers of pressure die casting moulds, a working group consisting of 10 companies of the tool and mould making was founded in March 2007 at the Institute of Production Engineering and Machine Tools (IFW) of the Leibniz Universität Hannover. The group aims at analyzing the difficulties of quotation costing of pressure die casting moulds and developing a geometrybased quotation costing system. In order to develop this system, a method has to be found that renders possible to use the geometry information of the casting part for an accurate calculation.The following chapter shows the results of an analysis conducted by the working group regarding the quotation costing process of pressure die casting mould manufacturers. Furthermore, these results provide a basis to summarize the challenges of the quotation costing process of pressure mould producing companies.

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