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Es geht um die Entwicklung eines Software-Tools zur Unterstützung bei der Auswahl von geeigneten 3D-Druckdienstleistern im Kontext der additiven Ersatzteillogistik. Im Fokus steht der Logistikdienstleister als potentieller Nutzer des Softwaretools. Das Softwaretool erfüllt zwei zentrale Funktionen: Überprüfung ob ein Ersatzteil additiv gefertigt werden soll und Auswahl eines konkreten Produzenten durch Matchingalgorithmus.
Immer noch ist es um die Zufriedenheit der Kunden mit der Qualität von Diestleistungen hierzulande nicht gut bestellt. An der Verbesserung dieses Zustands müssen wir arbeiten, in den Unternehmen, in den staatlichen Organisationen und in den Bildungseinrichtungen, denn die Frage, ob und wie wir den Wandel zur uneingeschränkten Servicegesellschaft bewältigen - der ohne eine konsequente Digitalisierung der Wertschöpfung unmöglich ist -, hat auch entscheidenden Einfluss auf die Zukunft des Wirtschaftsstandorts Deutschland.
Influenced by the high dynamic of the markets and the steadily increasing demand for short delivery times the importance of supply chain optimization is growing. In particular, the order process plays a central role in achieving short delivery times and constantly needs to evaluate the trade-off between high inventory and the risk of stock-outs. However, analyzing different order strategies and the influence of various production parameters is difficult to achieve in industrial practice. Therefore, simulations of supply chains are used in order to improve processes in the whole value chain. The objective of this research is to evaluate two different order strategies (t, q, t, S) in a four-stage supply chain. In order to measure the performance of the supply chain the quantity of the backlog will be considered. A Design of Experiments approach is supposed to enhance the significance of the simulation results.
The shop floor is a dynamic environment, where deviations to the production plan frequently occur. While there are many tools to support production planning, production control is left unsupported in handling disruptions. The production controller evaluates the deviations and selects the most suitable countermeasures based on his experience. The transparency should be increased in order to improve the decision quality of the production controller by providing meaningful information during his decision process. In this paper, we propose a framework in which an interactive production control system supports the controller in the identification of and reaction to disturbances on the shop floor. At the same time, the system is being improved and updated by the domain knowledge of the controller. The reference architecture consists of three main parts. The first part is the process mining platform, the second part is the machine learning subsystem that consists of a part for the classification of the disturbances and one part for recommending countermeasures to identified disturbances. The third part is the interactive user interface. Integrating the user’s feedback will enable an adaptation to the constantly changing constraints of production control. As an outlook for a technical realization, the design of the user interface and the way of interaction is presented. For the evaluation of our framework, we will use simulated event data of a sample production line. The implementation and test should result in higher production performance by reducing the downtime of the production and increase in its productivity.
"New Service-Work"
(2021)
Durch die Corona-Krise befinden wir uns auf einmal alle in einer völlig neuen Arbeitswelt. Innerhalb kürzester Zeit waren Unternehmen im Service gezwungen, Antworten für – vielleicht auch manchmal schon länger bestehende Fragen – rund um das Thema „New Work“ zu finden. Daher hat sich der KVD in den vergangenen Monaten im Rahmen einer ausgewiesenen Expertenrunde aus Praxis und Forschung mit dem Thema „New Service-Work“ auseinandergesetzt. Vor dem Hintergrund der aktuellen Herausforderungen haben wir die zentralen Handlungsfelder für die Umsetzung dieser neuen Arbeitswelt einmal intensiver beleuchtet. In über 25 digitalen Treffen wurden die Chancen, Risiken oder auch Hemmnisse zu den jeweiligen Handlungsfeldern intensiv diskutiert und aufbereitet. Mit einigen aktuellen, innovativen Lösungsansätzen aus unseren Mitgliedsunternehmen hoffen wir, auch Ihnen erste Hinweise oder Impulse geben zu können, wie auch bald in Ihrem Unternehmen „New Service-Work“ Einzug halten könnte.
In manufacturing, adherence to delivery dates is one of the main logistic goals. The production control department has to cope with short-term deviations from the planned route sheets. Because of unforeseen disruptions, e.g. machine breakdowns or shortage of material or personnel, in some situations, the promised delivery date to the customer is at stake. In practice, a fast and reasonable decision on how to deal with the delayed order is required. This decision process is often based on a qualitative analysis relying on the planner’s subjective assessment of a complex situation. To improve the quality of possible countermeasures this paper presents an application, which supports the decision process through a quantified analysis using real-time data from business application systems in combination with a simulation of the value stream. The developed app is part of the decision process and estimates the effect of selected countermeasures to accelerate a delayed order. Performance indicators illustrate the effect of the countermeasures on the specific order as well as the whole system. This approach empowers the planner to assess unforeseen situations and aims to improve the quality of the decision-making process. This paper describes the architecture of the application, its simulation ecosystem, the relevant data and the decision process to select the most effective countermeasures.
Die Globalisierung und der steigende Wettbewerbsdruck erfordern, dass Supply Chains heutzutage komplexe Anforderungen erfüllen. Dabei müssen sie gleichzeitig flexibel genug sein, um an kurzfristige Veränderungen angepasst werden zu können. Ein unternehmensübergreifender Datenaustausch ermöglicht den Akteuren durch schnelle Informationsweitergabe über auftretende Ereignisse entlang der Supply Chain, dynamisch auf aktuelle Gegebenheiten zu reagieren und dadurch hervorgerufene mögliche Schäden zu minimieren. Auch wenn viele Unternehmen mit der Bereitstellung von Daten noch zurückhaltend sind, gehen die Vorteile des Datenaustauschs weit über die Verkürzung der Reaktionszeit hinaus.
Das Gegenteil von Theorie ist die Praxis. So sagt man landläufig und unterstellt damit oft, dass wissenschaftiche Erkenntnisse nicht immer für den Alltag taugen. Dass Theorie aber nicht gleich Theorie ist und Wissenschaft und Praxis trotz aller Unterschiedlichkeit aufeinander angewiesen sind, darauf weist das
FIR an der RWTH Aachen schon mit der Auflösung seines Akronyms hin: „Forschung. Innovation. Realisierung."
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.
Task-Specific Decision Support Systems in Multi-Level Production Systems based on the digital shadow
(2019)
Due to the increasing spread of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) suitable for shop floors, the production environment can more easily be digitally connected to the various decision making levels of a production system. This connectivity as well as an increasing availability of high-resolution feedback data, can be used for decision support for all levels of the company and supply chain. To enable data driven decision support, different data sources were structured and linked. The data was combined in task-specific digital shadows, selecting clustering and aggregation rules to gain information. Visual interfaces for task-specific decision support systems (DSS) were developed and evaluated positively by domain experts. The complexity of decision making on different levels was successfully reduced as an effect of the processed amounts of data. These interfaces support decision making, but can additionally be improved if DSS are extended with smart agents as proposed in the Internet of Production.
Data-driven transparency in end-to-end operations in real-time is seen as a key benefit of the fourth industrial revolution. In the context of a factory, it enables fast and precise diagnoses and corrections of deviations and, thus, contributes to the idea of an agile enterprise. Since a factory is a complex socio-technical system, multiple technical, organizational and cultural capabilities need
to be established and aligned. In recent studies, the underlying broad accessibility of data and corresponding analytics tools are called “data democratization”. In this study, we examine the status quo of the relevant capabilities for data democratization in the manufacturing industry.
(1) and outline the way forward.
(2) The insights are based on 259 studies on the digital maturity of factories from multiple industries and regions of the world using the acatech Industrie 4.0 Maturity Index as a framework. For this work, a subset of the data was selected.
(3) As a result, the examined factories show a lack of capabilities across all dimensions of the framework (IT systems, resources, organizational structure, culture).
(4) Thus, we conclude that the outlined implementation approach needs to comprise the technical backbone for a data pipeline as well as capability building and an organizational transformation.
In the food industry, a very large potential of data ecosystems is seen, in which data is understood, exchanged and monetized as an economic asset. However, despite the enormous economic potential, companies in the food industry continue to rely on traditional, product-oriented business models. Existing data in the value chain of industrial food production, e.g., in harvesting, logistics, and production processes, is primarily used for internal optimization and is not monetized in the form of data products. Especially the pricing of data products is a key challenge for data-based business models due to their special characteristics compared to conventional, analog offerings and multiple design options. The goal of this work is therefore to solve this issue by developing a framework that allows the identification of pricing models for data products in the industrial food production. For this purpose, following the procedure of typology formation, essential design parameters and the respective characteristics are derived. Furthermore, three types for pricing models of data products are shown. The results will serve not only stakeholders in the food industry but also manufacturing companies in general as input for an orientation of their databased business models.
Eine wesentliche Bedingung zur Optimierung der Wertschöpfungsprozesse ist die Transparenz über die leistungsbestimmenden Faktoren eines Unternehmens. Die Ermittlung dieser Faktoren stellt für viele Industriebetriebe eine Herausforderung dar. Im Rahmen der Veröffentlichung wird daher eine Vorgehensweise zur systematischen Identifikation von Einflussfaktoren der Unternehmenskennzahlen vorgestellt, welche die Grundlage zur Ableitung von individuellen Stellhebeln zur Steigerung der Unternehmensleistungsfähigkeit darstellt.
Der vorliegende Beitrag beschreibt eine Vorgehensweise zur kurzfristigen Umstellung von Blended-Learning- oder Präsenzangeboten. Hierbei werden neben möglichst schnell umsetzbaren technischen Lösungen auch notwendige organisatorische Anpassungen thematisiert und anhand des E-Mas-Weiterbildungsprogramms illustriert.
Recent developments have demonstrated the challenges and impacts of disruptions in supply chains. Current disruptions especially affected procurement and have indicated a lack of resilience. Resilience aims at being prepared, decreasing the impact, and enabling fast reactions and adaption in case of disruptions. The systematic design of resilience in procurement is significantly influenced by proactive and strategic actions before disruptions occur. Thus, the procurement strategy plays a major role when increasing resilience. The procurement strategy is influenced by various factors. Thus, a data-based approach for its systematic design is required. Based on the vision of the Internet of Production (IoP), this paper presents a data-based approach for designing procurement strategies. The IoP is a framework that enables cross-domain collaboration by providing semantically adequate and contextual data from production, development, and usage in real-time at an appropriate granularity. The paper aims at analyzing the state of the art regarding the design of procurement strategy in uncertain environments and the identification of success-critical purchased articles. Based on this, an approach is developed that is structured along the action research cycle and uses CRISP-DM to further detail the different steps. Through the use of these frameworks, both practical applicability and objective evaluation are ensured. The proposed approach thus allows the systematic evaluation of purchased articles regarding supply risks and lies the foundation for the adaption of the procurement strategy. The resulting approach is the foundation for future practical application of different use cases. As one central use case for the presented approach, the paper introduces the textile industry and its supply chains.
For most industries, Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds substantial potentials. In the last decades, the extent of data created worldwide is exponentially increasing, and this trend is likely to continue. However, despite the prospects, many companies are not yet using AI at all or not generating added value. Often, an AI project does not exceed its pilot phase and is not scaled up. The problems to create value from AI applications in companies are manifold, especially since AI itself is diverse and there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach. One often stated obstacle, why many AI projects fail, is a missing AI strategy. This leads to isolated solutions, which do not consider synergies, scalability and seldom result in added value for the company. To create a company-specific AI strategy with a top-down approach, a generic but holistic framework is needed. This paper proposes a strategic AI procedure model that enables companies to define a specific AI strategy for successfully implementing AI solutions. In addition, we demonstrate in this paper how we apply the introduced strategic AI procedure model on an AI-based flexible monitoring and regulation system for power distribution grid operators in the context of an ongoing research project.
Als Beispiel einer globalen Krisensituation zeigt die COVID-19-Pandemie eindrucksvoll die Schwachstellen heutiger Wertschöpfungsnetzwerke. Vor dem Hintergrund zunehmend komplexer und vernetzter Wertschöpfungsnetzwerke steigt für Unternehmen die Bedeutung einer resilienten Gestaltung derselben. Dabei wird davon ausgegangen, dass ähnliche Krisensituationen in Zukunft häufiger auftreten werden. Ziel dieser Expertise ist es, Unternehmen bei der Identifikation von Potenzialen und Maßnahmen für die resiliente Gestaltung ihrer Wertschöpfungsnetzwerke zu unterstützen.
Glück per Abo
(2019)
Was charakterisiert einen Menschen jenseits seines offensichtlichen Verhaltens und seiner äußeren Gestalt? Wohl nichts so sehr wie seine Bedürfnisse und Wünsche. „Am Ende existiert der Mensch nur durch seine Bedürfnisse“, bringt es der Dichter Friedrich Hebbel überspitzt auf den Punkt. Doch wie sehen diese Bedürfnisse aus?
In the age of digitalization, manufacturing companies are under increased pressure to change due to product complexity, growing customer requirements and digital business models. The increasing digitization of processes and products is opening up numerous opportunities for mechanical engineering companies to exploit the resulting potential for value creation. Subscription business is a new form of business model in the mechanical engineering industry, which aims to continuously increase customer benefit to align the interests of both companies and customers. Characterized by a permanent data exchange, databased learning about customer behavior, and the transfer into continuous innovations to increase customer value, subscription business helps to make Industry 4.0 profitable. The fact that machines and plants are connected to the internet and exchange large amounts of data results in critical information security risks. In addition, the loss of knowledge and control, data misuse and espionage, as well as the manipulation of transaction or production data in the context of subscription transactions are particularly high risks. Complementary to direct and obvious consequences such as loss of production, the attacks are increasingly shifting to non-transparent and creeping impairments of production or product quality, which are only apparent at a late stage, or the influencing of payment flows. A transparent presentation of possible risks and their scope, as well as their interrelationships, does not exist. This paper shows a research approach in which the structure of subscription models and their different manifestations based on their risks and vulnerabilities are characterized. This allows suitable cyber security measures to be taken at an early stage. From this basis, companies can secure existing or planned subscription business models and thus strengthen the trust of business partners and customers.
Prinzipien zur erfolgreichen Umsetzung von KI-Geschäftsmodellinnovationen
In Zeiten des zunehmenden globalen Wettbewerbs und hoch vernetzter Wertschöpfungsketten entwickelt sich Künstliche Intelligenz zu einem immer wichtiger werdenden Wettbewerbsfaktor für Unternehmen am Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland. Durch den Einsatz von KI-Verfahren können nicht nur interne Geschäftsprozesse kostensenkend optimiert, sondern auch neue, digitale Geschäftsfelder und -modelle erschlossen werden. Es lassen sich zum einen Trends identifizieren, denen der Einsatz von KI in deutschen Unternehmen folgt. Zum anderen zeigt sich, dass sich KI unterschiedlich stark auf verschiedene Dimensionen innovativer Geschäftsmodelle auswirkt. Insgesamt lassen sich so Prinzipien ableiten, die die erfolgreiche Umsetzung von KI-Geschäftsmodellinnovationen beschreiben.
Neue Technologie- und Anwendungstrends kennzeichnen KI-Nutzung
Die tatsächliche KI-Landschaft in den Wertschöpfungsketten von KI-nutzenden Unternehmen ist durch Trends gekennzeichnet. Diese lassen sich in Technologie- und Anwendungstrends unterteilen. Experteninterviews zeigen beispielsweise, dass KI-Anwendungen bevorzugt auf Cloud-Infrastrukturen entwickelt und bereitgestellt werden. Das wiederum rückt die Frage nach der Wahrung der Datensouveränität in den Vordergrund. Anwendung findet KI tendenziell zur Prognose und Überwachung.
Sechs Prinzipien beeinflussen die erfolgreiche Umsetzung von KI-Geschäftsmodellinnovationen
Fallstudien über ein breites Spektrum der deutschen Wirtschaft beleuchten, welche Aspekte eines KI-basierten Geschäftsmodells den größten Effekt auf das Unternehmen haben. Hier lässt sich ein besonders hoher Einfluss von KI auf das Nutzenversprechen neuartiger, digitaler Leistungen der Unternehmen an die Kundinnen und Kunden feststellen. So lassen sich sechs Erfolgsprinzipien zur erfolgreichen Implementierung von KI-Technologien identifizieren, um die wirtschaftliche Nutzung von KI für Unternehmen in Deutschland im globalen Wettbewerb weiter zu steigern. So empfiehlt es sich zum Beispiel – neben der Auswahl des richtigen KI-Anwendungsfalles – ebenfalls darauf zu achten, dass die KI-Anwendung sowohl den Anbietenden wie auch den Anwendenden nützt. Diese und weitere Erfolgsprinzipien werden detailliert in der Studie Künstliche Intelligenz – Geschäftsmodellinnovationen und Entwicklungstrends beschrieben.
Die Zukunftspotenziale der digitalen Technologie könnten den Dienstleistungssektor entscheidend transformieren und damit der schrumpfenden Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der deutschen Wirtschaft neuen Schwung verleihen.
Das Schiff des Wirtschaftsstandorts Deutschland schwankt in rauer werdender See. Es schwankt weniger, weil die traditionellen deutschen Wertschöpfungssäulen (insbesondere die Flaggschiffe Automobil- und Maschinenbau sowie Chemie- und Logistikindustrie) hierzulande an Know how eingebüßt hätten; es sind vielmehr die großen Technologiedurchbrüche der letzten Jahrzehnte, die die deutschen Tugenden, welche mehr als ein Jahrhundert lang für einen Spitzenplatz unter den großen Wirtschaftsmächten gesorgt haben, drastisch an Bedeutung verlieren lassen. Perfektionismus, Verarbeitungsqualität, Zuverlässigkeit und Langlebigkeit von Produkten aller Art sicherten der deutschen Wirtschaft über viele Jahrzehnte hinweg internationales Ansehen. Das führte allerdings zu einer gewissen Selbstzufriedenheit, die die eigene Spitzenposition in der Welt als Selbstläufer ansah. Verliebt in die eigene Perfektion (der Strategieberater und Blogger Sascha Lobo spricht plakativ von einer „Spaltmaßfixierung“ ganzer Wirtschaftszweige) und an permanenter rein inkrementeller Innovation orientiert, hinkt Deutschland auf wichtigen Gebieten der künftigen Wertschöpfungsfelder dem Wettbewerb gefährlich hinterher – insbesondere auf dem für die Zukunft entscheidenden Technologiegebiet der Digitalisierung.
In Germany’s transition to a more sustainable industrial landscape, electricity generated by wind turbines (WT) remains a mainstay of the energy mix. Operating and maintenance costs, which account for roughly 25% of electricity generation costs in onshore WTs make improvements of maintenance activities a key lever in the economic operation of WTs. Prescriptive maintenance is a possible approach for improved maintenance activities. It is a concept where asset condition data is used to recommend specific actions and has great potential for the operation of wind parks. However, especially small, but also large wind park operators, and maintenance service providers often struggle with the implementation of such a new maintenance approach. As a part of the research project ReStroK, a learning game has been developed to support the training and familiarization of maintenance technicians with the concepts and underlying principles of this maintenance approach. In this paper, the concept for the development of a learning game will be presented. Multiple scenarios for its usage and their corresponding requirements will be discussed and an overview over the game will be given.
Industry 4.0 and Smart Maintenance represent a great opportunity to make manufacturing and maintenance more effective, safer, and reliable. However, they also represent massive change and corresponding challenges for industrial companies, as many different options and starting points have to be weighed and the individual right paths for achieving Smart Maintenance need to be identified. In our paper, we describe our approach to evaluating maintenance organizations in a case study for the oil and gas industry, developing a shared vision for the future, and deriving economical and effective measures. We will demonstrate our approach, by showcasing a specific example from the oil and gas industry, where a need for action on HSE-relevant critical flanges in the company's piping systems was identified. We describe the steps, that were taken to identify the need for action, the specifications of the project and the criticality analysis of the piping system. This resulted in the derivation of a digitalization measure for critical flanges, which was first commercially analyzed and then the flanges were equipped with a continuous monitoring solution. Finally, a conclusion is drawn on the performed procedure and the achieved improvements.
Subscription business transforms traditional business models of machinery and plant engineering. Many manufacturing companies struggle to pull out the potential created by Industry 4.0 and make it economically usable. In addition to technological innovations, it is necessary to transform the business model. This leads to a shift from ownership-based and product-centric business models to outcome-based business models, which focus on the customer's value and thus realize a unique value proposition and competitive advantage – the outcome economy. Based on a case study analysis among manufacturing companies, this paper provides further clarification including a definition and constituent characteristics of subscription business models in machinery and plant engineering.
Eine Herausforderung für produzierende Unternehmen in der Entwicklung intelligenter Produkte besteht darin, dass die Zielstellung, die mit einem intelligenten Produkt verfolgt wird, nicht expliziert ist. Zudem ist oftmals nicht spezifiziert, in welchem Anwendungsfall ein intelligentes Produkt agieren soll. Produzierende Unternehmen benötigen Unterstützung, um eine zielorientierte und folglich wirtschaftliche Melioration existierender Produkte zu gewährleisten. Ebendiese Melioration wird im Kontext von intelligenten Produkten als Smartifizierung bezeichnet und stellt damit einen Entwicklungsprozess dar, der ein bestehendes Produkt als Ausgangssituation im Sinne einer Anpassungskonstruktion expliziert. Die originäre Produktfunktion wird folglich nicht verändert, sondern das Produkt um digitale Funktionen und Dienstleistungen erweitert. Der Artikel befasst sich daher erstens mit der Beschreibung generischer Ziele für den Einsatz intelligenter Produkte im Maschinenbau. Eine Zusammenstellung und Erläuterung solcher Ziele unterstützt Unternehmen, eine Präzisierung der Zielfestlegung in der Initiierungsphase eines Smartifizierungsprojekts durchzuführen. Zweitens wird unter Anwendung der Ziel-Mittel-Beziehung ein Anwendungsfall intelligenter Produkte beschrieben. Abschließend werden beide Aspekte in einer Methode zusammengefasst, wie mittels Ziel- und Anwendungsfallbetrachtung Anforderungen abgeleitet und wie diese Elemente in Vorgehensmodelle der Produktentwicklung eingebettet werden können. Exemplarisch wird anhand einer Stanzmaschine aufgezeigt wie die Methode und die sich daraus ableitenden Ergebnisse im Smartifizierungsprozess zur Entwicklung einer intelligenten Stanzmaschine eingesetzt werden.
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.
Nowadays, the market for information and communication technologies used for IOT-applications grows daily. Since companies need technologies to transform their business processes corresponding to the digital revolution, they need to know which technologies are available, and fit the best for their use case. Their inertial issue is the lacking overview of technologies suitable to connect their production or logistics. Hence, this paper presents a methodology to select technologies (and combinations) based on their functions. It differentiates between information and communication technologies, digital technologies and connecting technologies by the physical function and its role in a cyber-physical system. Depending on the use case, the applicability of every technology varies. Due to that reason, the paper illustrates a ranked qualification of the technologies for typical use cases, focussing tracking and tracing issues in the intralogistics of producing companies. The evaluation is performed upon a literature research, a market study to identify suitable technologies, and various expert interviews to assess the applicability of the technologies.
Many ERP systems support configurable materials. Due to an ever increasing number of product variants the benefits of this approach are well understood. However, these implementations are not standardized. In this article we propose a new standard interface for the exchange of configuration data. This would lead to further benefits as systems as Advanced Planning systems could better use manufacturing flexibility while web shops as Amazon could easily integrate manufacturers of complex products with much reduced implementation effort.
Towards the Generation of Setup Matrices from Route Sheets and Feedback Data with Data Analytics
(2018)
The function or department of production control in manufacturing companies deals with short-term scheduling of orders and the management of deviations during order execution. Depending on the equipment and characteristics of orders, sequence dependent setup times might occur. In these cases for companies that focus on high utilization of their assets due to long phases of ramp up and high energy costs, it might be optimal to choose sequences with minimal setup time times between orders. Identifying such sequences requires detailed and correct information regarding the specific setup times. With increasing product variety and shorter lot sizes, it becomes more difficult and rather time intense to determine these values manually. One approach is to analyse the relevant features of the orders described in the route sheets or recipes to find similarities in materials and required tools. This paper presents a methodology, which supports setup optimized sequencing for sequence dependent setup times through constructing the setup matrix from such route sheets with the use of data analytics.
Manufacturing companies worldwide recognized the high potential of Industrie 4.0 in order to increasing production efficiency. Key benefits include creation of integrated systems, networked products and improvement of service portfolios. However, for many companies deriving and evaluating necessary measures to use Industrie 4.0 potentials represents a major challenge. This paper introduces the "acatech Industrie 4.0 Maturity Index" as an approach to meet this challenge. The development of multidimensional maturity model intents to provide companies an assessment methodology. The aim is to capture the status quo in companies in order to be able to develop individual roadmaps for the successful introduction of Industrie 4.0 and manage the transformation progressively.
Service Engineering Models
(2019)
Since the field of service engineering emerged in the late 20th century, the service industry has undergone drastic changes. Among the reasons for these changes is the increasing digitalization, which has made it difficult for companies to successfully develop new service offerings. While numerous service engineering models are available to provide guidance during the design of new services, many of them cannot keep up with the requirements of today’s economic environment. The present paper examines the requirements that service engineering models need to meet in order to be suitable guidelines for the digital age. To this end, the introduction illustrates how digitalization has changed the service industry. Afterwards, selected service engineering models and related norms are presented. Finally, a set of requirements for modern service engineering models derived from best practices from recent years is introduced.
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.
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.
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.
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