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The successful use of Business Analytics is increasingly becoming a differentiating competitive factor. The ability to extract data-driven insights and integrate them into decision-making is becoming growingly important. The underlying technologies are evolving exponentially, the value proposition differs from simple descriptive applications to automated decision-making. Existing approaches found in literature and practice to classify those levels only insufficiently mark down the boundaries between the different technology levels. As a consequence, it is often unclear which characteristics of the technology interact with the working environment, which can be described as a socio-technical system. Using a systematic literature review, this paper identifies the characteristics of Business Analytics and delineates three types of Business Analytics based on case studies. Thus, a starting point for the socio-technical system design and optimization for the use of Business Analytics is created.
Competitive differentiation in the manufacturing sector is no longer based on product and service innovations alone but on the ability to monetize the usage phase of products and services. To this end, manufacturers are increasingly looking at so-called subscription business models as a way of supplementing the traditional sale of products and services. Since supplier success in the subscription business is directly dependent on customer success, the setup and expansion of a so-called Customer Success Management (CSM) is required. While CSM has already been established in the software industry for several years, companies in the manufacturing sector are often still in the conceptual phase of a CSM, parallel to the setup and expansion of their subscription business. Therefore, this paper aims to support the set-up of a CSM by providing a reference data model, based on case study research, that can be used to support the organizational or daily CSM tasks and to serve as a blueprint for conceptualizing CSM-specific IT systems.
The use of chatbots has hardly been established in B2B companies to date and involves various challenges. The goal of this paper is to identify the biggest barriers to the successful implementation of chatbots in B2B customer service and to develop measures to overcome them. The barriers are identified by conducting expert interviews within the framework of Eisenhardt's case study research. These are examined through a socio-technical analysis focusing on people, technology, and organization. By means of systematic literature research and in-depth interviews with German chatbot providers and customers of chatbots, measures for overcoming the barriers are identified. Using interviews with experts from German chatbot providers, the responsible stakeholders of each measure according to the RASCI Responsibility Matrix are determined. A total of 46 implementation barriers and 100 measures to overcome these barriers are identified. The study shows that there are major barriers in the areas of people, technology, and organization of a socio-technical system that can cause the implementation of a chatbot to fail. A holistic view is therefore essential. The results provide firms with a guideline on how to overcome potential barriers during chatbot implementation in B2B customer service.
Forecasting-based skills management, which is oriented to the respective corporate goals, is gaining enormous importance as a central management tool. The aim is to predict future skills requirements and match them with existing interorganizational skills. Companies are required to anticipate changes in markets, industries, and technologies at an early stage as well as to identify changes in job profiles within an occupational profile by tapping into and evaluating various data sources. Based on these findings, they can then make informed decisions regarding skill gaps, for example, to implement targeted further training measures. Forecasting-based skills management offers the opportunity to optimally qualify employees for constantly changing tasks. At the same time, however, the targeted development of such skills requires a high level of time, financial and personnel resources, which small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) generally do not have at their disposal. In addition, many SMEs are not yet aware of the importance of this issue. Within the framework of research and industrial projects of the Smart Work department at the FIR (Institute for Industrial Management) at the RWTH Aachen University, an AI-based skills forecasting tool will be developed. The goal of the paper is to conceptualize the future machine learning method, that is able to generate individualized skills forecasts and recommendations for SMEs. This is achieved by linking societal forecasts and sector trends with company-specific conditions and skills. In order to generate a corresponding database, the derivation system is made available to various companies (large companies and SMEs) in order to obtain as many data sets as possible. The data sets obtained via the derivation system are then used as training data sets for the machine learning method, with the help of which an automatic derivation of competencies depending on new trends is to be made possible.
Digitization is constantly affecting the working world and is of enormous interest in many fields of science. But to what extent are innovative technologies actually being applied in regional SMEs and what are the obstacles to their introduction? From a psychological point of view, it is essential to consider the employee's health and the effects of innovative technologies on their everyday work. The aim of using innovative technologies should not be to completely replace human labor or to dequalify employees, but to relieve the workforce and free up working time for more meaningful activities. One concept that should be included in the human-centered design of human-machine interaction in artificial intelligence is the HAI-MMI concept (Huchler, 2020), which offers starting points for high-quality collaboration at various levels. To reduce the gap between science and industry, this paper focuses on the actual demands of SME in the Aachen region in Germany referring to a requirements analysis within the research project AKzentE4.0 (N = 50 SME) and discusses how appropriate innovative technologies of the Industry 4.0 and AI can be implemented and deployed in a human-centred way. Moreover, the establishment of a Human Factors Competence Center for Employment in Industry 4.0 is outlined, which is meant to be used for the dissemination of research results from the project and should narrow the gap between science and industry in the long run.
For developing a European industrial cooperation and involvement in the furniture industry, the international research project INEDIT conducted a survey for furniture customers. By finding out the needs and wishes of the customer regarding innovative products and the production process the project will establish a new way for designing and producing furniture. Within INEDIT a platform is built on which customized, technologically innovative and sustainable furniture can be created and produced in a co-creation process. The furniture industry should thus become significantly more flexible, transparent and sustainable. Following the "do-it-together" approach, a business ecosystem will be generated which creates added value not only for customers but also for designers, suppliers and manufacturing companies. In order to involve the customer even more actively in the design process and the production, the platform will provide access to a mix of digital and physical services and is linked to all other stakeholders in the value chain. To match the platform and the process to the needs, wishes and demands of the customer an anonymous survey with 300 participants was developed and conducted. By analyzing the survey, important factors were found for buying and for using furniture considering new technological inventions (e.g. 3D-printing or smart objects), sustainability of the products and the production process. Furthermore, the potential customer-group and their usage of the do-it-together process and additional activities can be tightened.
Systematisation Approach
(2023)
Current megatrends such as globalisation and digitalisation are increasing complexity, making systems for well-founded and short-term decision support indispensable. A necessary condition for reliable decision-making is high data quality. In practice, it is repeatedly shown that data quality is insufficient, especially in master and transaction data. Moreover, upcoming approaches for data-based decisions consistently raise the required level of data quality. Hence, the importance of handling insufficient data quality is currently and will remain elementary. Since the literature does not systematically consider the possibilities in the case of insufficient data quality, this paper presents a general model and systematic approach for handling those cases in real-world scenarios. The model developed here presents the various possibilities of handling insufficient data quality in a process-based approach as a framework for decision support. The individual aspects of the model are examined in more detail along the process chain from data acquisition to final data processing. Subsequently, the systematic approach is applied and contextualised for production planning and supply chain event management, respectively. Due to their general validity, the results enable companies to manage insufficient data quality systematically.
Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is an approach that focuses on the company's goals through trust-based agreements between leaders and employees. With the OKR framework in its original form, strategic business goals are aligned with the employees' active involvement, which promotes intrinsic motivation, transparency, commitment, and alignment. Inspired by the successes at Google and Intel and shaped by its use in the tech industry, the use of OKR increased across industries. Although companies within all sectors use the OKR framework, numerous implementation efforts fail. The challenges of practitioners are not fully addressed in the development of implementation concepts for OKR. One main reason is that these challenges are not taken into account in scientific publications. The paper aims to investigate to what extent existing OKR frameworks need to be adapted to provide companies with suiting implementation guidance. Firstly, OKR is placed in the context of academically widely discussed Performance Management Systems (PMS).
Secondly, criteria for successful PMS implementation are identified and used as a baseline for analyzing existing OKR implementation concepts. A systematic literature review shows the current state of research, identifying existing OKR implementation concepts from practice and theory. The OKR implementation concepts identified are systematically mapped to the series of identified criteria for PMS implementation. It is shown that the existing OKR frameworks do not address the described criteria necessary for a successful implementation of PMS, thus the adaptation of existing OKR implementation concepts is required.
The quarrying industry, which largely consists of less digitized SMEs, is an integral part of the German economy. More than 95% of the primary raw materials produced are used by the domestic construction industry. Quarrying companies operate demand-oriented with short planning horizons at several locations simultaneously. Due to the low level of digitization and the reluctance to share data, untapped efficiency potential in data-based demand forecasting and capacity planning arises. The situation is aggravated by the fact that SMEs have a heterogeneous mobile machinery so as not to become dependent on individual suppliers, and that transport distances of over 50 kilometers are uneconomical due to high transport costs and low material values. Within the research project PROmining a data-centric platform which improves demand forecast accuracy and multi-site capacity utilization is developed. One of the core functionalities of this platform is an industry-specific demand forecasting model. Against this background, this paper presents a methodology for establishing this forecasting model. To this end, expected demands of secondary industry sectors will be analyzed to improve mid-term volume-forecasting accuracy for the local quarrying industry. The data-centric platform will connect demand forecasting data with relevant key performance indicators of multi-site asset utilization. Following this methodology, operational planning horizons can be extended while significantly improving overall production efficiency. Thus, quarrying businesses are enabled to respond to fluctuating demand volumes effectively and can increase their personnel and machine utilization across multiple quarry sites.
The use of Business Analytics (BA) helps to improve the quality of decisions and reduces reaction latencies, especially in uncertain and volatile market situations. This expectation leads a continuously rising number of companies to make large investments in BA. The successful use of Business Analytics is increasingly becoming a differentiator. At the same time, the use of BA is not trivial, rather, it is subject to high socio-technical requirements. If these are not addressed, high risks arise that stand in the way of successful use. In particular, it is important to consider the risks in relation to the different types of BA in a differentiated way. So far, there is a lack of suitable approaches in the literature to consider these type-specific risks with regard to the socio-technical dimensions: people, technology, and organization. This paper addresses this gap by initially identifying risks in the use of Business Analytics. For this purpose, possible risks are identified using a systematic literature review and verified with a Delphi survey with various partners experienced in dealing with BA. Subsequently, the identified and validated risks are assigned to three different types of Business Analytics (Descriptive, Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics) and assessed in order to systematically address and reduce the risks. The result of this paper is an overview of the interactions between the socio-technically assigned risks, summarized in a risk catalog, and the different types of Business Analytics.
5G offers the manufacturing industry a wireless, fast and secure transmission technology with high range, low latency and the ability to connect a large number of devices. Existing transmission technologies are reaching their limits due to the increasing number of networked devices and high demands on reliability, data volume, security and latency. 5G fulfills these requirements and also combines the potential and use cases of previous transmission technologies so that unwanted isolated solutions can be merged. Use cases of transmission technologies that previously required a multitude of solutions can now be realized with a single technology. However, the general literature often refers to 5G use cases that can also be realized over cables in particular. In this paper, a literature review presents the current state of research on the various 5G application scenarios in production . Furthermore, concrete characteristics of 5G use cases are identified and assigned to the identified application scenarios. The goal is to verify the identified 5G use cases and to work out their 5G relevance in order to be able to concretely differentiate them from already existing Industrie 4.0 applications.
Crises are becoming more and more frequent. Whether natural disasters, economic crises, political events, or a pandemic - the right action mitigates the impact. The PAIRS project plans to minimize the surprise effect of these and to recommend appropriate actions based on data using artificial intelligence (AI). This paper conceptualizes a cascading model based on scenario technique, which acts as the basic approach in the project. The long-term discipline of scenario technique is integrated into the discipline of crisis management to enable short-term and continuous crises management in an automated manner. For this purpose, a practical crisis definition is given and interpreted as a process. Then, a cascading model is derived in which crises are continuously thought through using the scenario technique and three types of observations are classified: Incidents, disturbances, and crises. The presented model is exemplified within a non-technical application of a use case in the context of humanitarian logistics and the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, first technical insights from the field of AI are given in the form of a semantic description composing a knowledge graph. In summary, a conceptual model is presented to enable situation-based crisis management with automated scenario generation by combining the two disciplines of crisis management with scenario technique.
Innovation is one of the key drivers of growth, development, and profitability, which increases competitive advantages and has recently been moving towards industry 4.0 technologically. This motivates companies to update their business models (BM) towards industry 4.0. Moreover, there is a technique with the primary characteristics for achieving this motivation called "cross-industry innovation". Cross-industry innovation is a new method of innovation that concerns the creative translation and imitation of existing solutions from other industries for responding to the needs of the current market, sectors, areas, or domains. The challenge is to find out how far managers can rely on that to innovate their BM towards Industry 4.0. The aim of this study was to investigate the application of cross-industry innovation for designing industry 4.0 BM and explore the extent to which companies can rely on it as it has not been used for this purpose previously. This study utilized a database analysis to compare cross-industry innovation practices with industry 4.0 BM's characteristics in terms of value proposition, value creation, and value capture levels. In addition, some interviews were conducted with companies that had previously implemented cross-industry innovation to validate and generalize the results. The results indicated that cross-industry innovation practices can better fulfill flexible and dynamic networks, connected information flows, high efficiency, high scalability, and high availability in terms of value creation as well as variabilization of prices and costs in terms of value capture. Therefore, it demonstrated that cross-industry innovation was a more dependable and applicable strategy for designing the BM of Industry 4.0 than current practices.
The manufacturing industry consumes 54% of global energy and attributes for 20% of global CO2 emissions, demonstrating the industry’s role as global driver of climate change. Therefore, reducing its carbon footprint has become a major challenge as its current energy and resource consumption are not sustainable. Industrie 4.0 presents a chance to transform the prevailing paradigms of industrial value creation and advance sustainable developments. By using information and communication technologies for the intelligent networking of machines and processes, it has the potential to reduce energy and material consumption and is considered a key contributor to sustainable manufacturing as proclaimed by the European Commission in the term “twin transition”. As organizations still struggle to utilize the potential of Industrie 4.0 for a sustainable transformation, this paper presents a framework to successfully align their own twin transition. The framework is built upon three key design principles (micro level: leverage eco-efficient operations, meso level: facilitate circularity and macro level: foster value co-creation) derived using case study research by Eisenhardt, and four structural dimensions (resources, information systems, organizational structure and culture) based on the acatech Industrie 4.0 Maturity Index. Eleven interconnected areas of action are defined within the framework and offer a holistic and practical approach on how to leverage an organization’s twin transition. Within the conducted research, the framework was applied to the challenge of information quality and transparency required for high-value secondary plastics in the manufacturing industry. The result is a digital platform design that enables information transactions for secondary plastics and establishes a circular ecosystem. This shows the applicability of the framework and its potential to facilitate a structured approach for designing twin transitions in the manufacturing industry.
Feeding the growing world population is a scientific and economic challenge. The target variables to be optimised are the yield that can be produced on a given area and the reduction of the resources used for this purpose. High-wage countries are faced with the problem that the use of personnel is a significant cost driver. Developing countries, on the other hand, usually operate on much smaller field sizes, so that the work in the field is still strongly characterised by manual labour. One solution to meet these challenges is the use of smaller autonomous harvesting robots. These can be networked into a swarm of machines to work even larger fields. The networking of autonomous agricultural machines is a key use case for rural 5G networks. 5G technology can offer many advantages over older mobile communications standards and therefore make use cases more efficient or enable new ones. Various use cases are also conceivable in the field of agriculture, yet it is unclear how 5G networks can and must be specified for this purpose. In this paper, using the example of 5G-connected harvesters powered by swarm robotics, we present the challenges that have arisen and the specification that has been developed.
In road haulage, transports are interrupted by truck drivers to comply with driving and rest times. On long-distance routes, these interruptions lead to a considerable increase in transport time. Transport interruption can be avoided by so-called relay traffic: a vehicle (e. g. semi-trailer) is handed over to a rested driver at the end of the driving time. This type of transport requires a certain company size. In Germany, however, transport companies have 11 employees on average. Intra-company relay traffic is therefore not economically viable for most transport companies. To organize an intermodal transport across forwarding companies, long-distance routes need to be split into partial routes to divide them between freight forwarders and carriers. This paper presents a data concept for an algorithm to find the best possible route sections along a previously defined start and endpoint. The developed data concept includes order-specific data, forwarder-specific data, real-time traffic data, geographical data as well as data from freight forwarding software and telematics to be the basis for the route sectioning algorithm. In this paper, different data sources, external services and logistic systems are analyzed and evaluated. It is shown which data is needed and what the best ways are to select and derive this data from the different data sources.
Due to shorter product life cycles and the increasing internationalization of competition, companies are confronted with increasing complexity in supply chain management. Event-based systems are used to reduce this complexity and to support employees' decisions. Such event-based systems include tracking & tracing systems on the one hand and supply chain event management on the other. Tracking & tracing systems only have the functions of monitoring and reporting deviations, whereas supply chain event management systems also function as simulation, control, and measurement. The central element connecting these systems is the event. It forms the information basis for mapping and matching the process sequences in the event-based systems. The events received from the supply chain partner form the basis for all downstream steps and must, therefore, contain the correct data. Since the data quality is insufficient in numerous use cases and incorrect data in supply chain event management is not considered in the literature, this paper deals with the description and typification of incorrect event data. Based on a systematic literature review, typical sources of errors in the acquisition and transmission of event data are discussed. The results are then applied to event data so that a typification of incorrect event types is possible. The results help to significantly improve event-based systems for use in practice by preventing incorrect reactions through the detection of incorrect event data.
Companies operate in an increasingly volatile environment where different developments like shorter product lifecycles, the demand for customized products and globalization increase the complexity and interconnectivity in supply chains. Current events like Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic or the blockade of the Suez canal have caused major disruptions in supply chains. This demonstrates that many companies are insufficiently prepared for disruptions. As disruptions in supply chains are expected to occur even more frequently in the future, the need for sufficient preparation increases. Increasing resilience provides one way of dealing with disruptions. Resilience can be understood as the ability of a system to cope with disruptions and to ensure the competitiveness of a company. In particular, it enables the preparation for unexpected disruptions. The level of resilience is thereby significantly influenced by actions initiated prior to a disruption. Although companies recognize the need to increase their resilience, it is not systematically implemented. One major challenge is the multidimensionality and complexity of the resilience construct. To systematically design resilience an understanding of the components of resilience is required. However, a common understanding of constituent parts of resilience is currently lacking. This paper, therefore, proposes a general framework for structuring resilience by decomposing the multidimensional concept into its individual components. The framework contributes to an understanding of the interrelationships between the individual components and identifies resilience principles as target directions for the design of resilience. It thus sets the basis for a qualitative assessment of resilience and enables the analysis of resilience-building measures in terms of their impact on resilience. Moreover, an approach for applying the framework to different contexts is presented and then used to detail the framework for the context of procurement.
The environment in which companies operate is increasingly volatile and complex. This results in an increased exposure to disruptions. Past disruptions have especially affected procurement. Thus, companies need to prepare for disruptions. The preparedness for disruptions in the context of procurement is significantly influenced by the design of the procurement strategy. However, a high number of purchased articles and a variety of influencing factors lead to high complexity in procurement. The systematic design of the procurement strategy should therefore take into account the criticality of the purchased articles. This enables to focus on the purchased articles that have a high impact on the disruption preparedness. Existing approaches regarding the design of the procurement strategy in uncertain environments either lack practical applicability and objective evaluation or focus on the criticality of raw materials rather than of purchased articles. Therefore, a data-based approach for the systematic design of the procurement strategy in the context of the Internet of Production has been proposed. One central aspect of this approach is the identification of success-critical purchased articles. Thus, this paper proposes a framework for characterizing purchased articles regarding supply risks by combining two systematic analyses. First, a systematic literature review is performed to answer the question of what factors can be used to describe the supply risks of purchased articles. The results are analyzed regarding sources and impacts of risks and thus contribute to a structured characterization of supply risks. Second, existing criticality assessment approaches for raw materials are analyzed to identify categories and indicators that describe purchased articles. The results of both reviews provide the basis for linking product characteristics with supply risks and assessing product criticality which will be integrated into an app prototype.
Electricity generated by wind turbines (WT) is a mainstay of the transition to renewable energy. In order to economically utilize WT is, operating and maintenance costs, which account for 25% of total electricity generation costs in onshore WT’s, are a focus of cost reduction activities. Implementing a data-driven prescriptive maintenance approach is one way to achieve this. So far, various approaches for prescriptive maintenance for onshore WT’s have been suggested.
However, little research has addressed the practical implementation considering sociotechnical aspects. The aim of this paper is therefore to identify success factors for the successful implementation of such a maintenance strategy with clear and holistic guidance on how existing knowledge on prescriptive maintenance from science can be transferred to business practice. These recommendations are developed through case study research and classified in the four structural areas of Acatech’s Industry 4.0 Maturity Index: Resources, Information Systems, Organizational Structure and Culture.