Demographic change in focus of production enterprises Planning today for tomorrow

Producing enterprises especially in Europe and Japan have to deal with the effects of the demographic change. Not only an unbalanced age structure in many enterprises with a high number of older workers but although the rising pension entrance age in many countries lead to an older workforce. Older co-workers are however often reduced in their physical efficiency, so that clock-bound work or lifting heavy loads is not possible anymore and adequate jobs for older employees must be designed and offered. But in many enterprises the impact of the problem is not clear. A prognosis about the future age structure in the company and at the same time of the number and type of restrictions of the workforce is needed. The following paper describes how the size of the problem for an enterprise can be appraised and how measures can be derived.