Managing agile ramp-up projects in manufacturing – status quo and recommendations

In an ever-changing business environment, frequent new product development projects are inevitable. Ramp-up as a critical lifecycle phase plays a major role in successful product marketing. This paper provides an updated overview of ramp-up concepts, challenges, and strategies, and makes recommendations for managing ramp-up projects. To this end, theoretical insights from the literature provided valuable insights which were extended by the findings of an empirical study. The study consists of a survey conducted between November 2021 and January 2022 in 147 companies from the manufacturing sector. The paper culminates in a set of recommendations to support ramp-up projects, which are structured in three steps: preparation, conducting ramp-up, and transfer to production. The following principles have been identified as highly important in ramp-up projects, namely, agility principles, collaboration and integration, and system robustness and continuous improvement. The recommendations support agile ramp-up management and are designed to help practitioners to deal with frequent ramp-ups in a more effective and structured manner.