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Störungen und Änderungen des Produktionssystems führen zu Kosten und Aufwänden, bieten jedoch auch die Chance zur kontinuierlichen Verbesserung.
Um Änderungsanfragen zu erfassen, können etablierte Ansätze genutzt werden. Diese vernachlässigen jedoch die Anforderungen, denen sich ein Produktionssystem im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung ausgesetzt sieht. Der vorliegende Beitrag stellt einen Ansatz zur standardisierten Erfassung von Änderungsanfragen vor, welcher die Ausgangsbasis für die Bewertung von Änderungsanfragen in bestehenden IT-Systemen bietet.
This paper addresses the challenge of a systematic requirement-oriented configuration and selection of cyber physical systems (CPS) for SMEs. As the key technologies of realizing the digitalization and interconnection of production processes, manufacturing companies have realized the potential benefits brought by CPS. However, due to the
complexity and fast development of CPS technology, it is difficult for SMEs, which lack expertise and financial resources, to select the appropriate CPS technologies meeting both functional and financial requirements. To overcome the issue, an online matching platform is developed to let SMEs express their needs and assist them onceptualize
the individual CPS. This paper presents the matching methodology of the matching platform, which can not only match technical characteristics but also evaluate economic potentials. Then, it was demonstrated by a tracking and tracing use case in the end-of-line assembly of a small-sized German electric automobile manufacturer.
Zeugnis der Reife
(2018)
Aktuell sehen sich deutsche Unternehmen damit konfrontiert, dass ihre bisherigen Produktionsabläufe und Arbeitsweisen immer weniger mit der Digitalisierung und den damit veränderten Maßstäben des 21. Jahrhunderts mithalten können. Neue innovative Lösungen werden benötigt, um produktiv voranzugehen und den Wandel für sich zu nutzen.
Die digitale Transformation hat mittlerweile alle Wertschöpfungsstufen im industriellen Sektor erfasst. So ist ein großer Teil aktuell produzierter Maschinen bereits mit Sensorik und Software ausgestattet und kommuniziert über digitale Infrastrukturen. Stetig sinkende Kosten für Sensorik , Vernetzungstechnologien, Rechen- und Speicherleistung erlauben Unternehmen die wirtschaftliche Erhebung und Verarbeitung von Daten in einem bisher nicht gekannten Ausmaß. Diese Veränderungen durch Digitalisierung und Industrie 4.0 müssen Unternehmen als Chance für den industriellen Service nutzen.
It is crucial today that economies harness renewable energies and integrate them into the existing grid. Conventionally, energy has been generated based on forecasts of peak and low demands. Renewable energy can neither be produced on demand nor stored efficiently. Thus, the aim of this paper is to evaluate Deep Learning-based forecasts of energy consumption to align energy consumption with renewable energy production. Using a dataset from a use-case related to landfill leachate management, multiple prediction models were used to forecast energy demand.The results were validated based on the same dataset from the recycling industry. Shallow models showed the lowest Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE), significantly outperforming a persistence baseline for both, long-term (30 days), mid-term (7 days) and short-term (1 day) forecasts. A potential decrease of up to 23% in peak energy demand was found that could lead to a reduction of 3,091 kg in CO2-emissions per year. Our approach requires low finanacial investments for energy-management hardware, making it suitable for usage in Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs).
This paper addresses the challenge of modelling individual cyber-physical systems (CPS) for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in manufacturing industries. CPS are key technology building blocks for the implementation of Industrie 4.0. Especially for SMEs the increase of production efficiency and reduction of manufacturing costs through CPS offer potential to maintain their competitiveness and innovation capacity. Although SMEs perceive the potential of CPS, they often lack financial and human resources to acquire the necessary CPS-competencies as well as an overview of all the currently available technological solutions. To overcome this issue a matching platform will offer SMEs support in finding suitable CPS-components by letting them express their functional and technical requirements. The matching logic is based on a set of morphologies that encompasses the functional and requirement spectrum of CPS-components. The matching algorithm analyses the input for congruence of requirements and available technologies and suggests suitable technology combinations. This paper describes the methodology of the matching platform, and introduces the research work to define and to develop the technology morphologies. The presented results facilitate the selection and configuration of CPS for SMEs.
In recent years, the complexity of the management of supply chains has increased significantly due to the growing individualization of products and dynamics of the market environment. To remain competitive, ensuring efficient and flexible processes and procedures along the entire supply chain are of particular importance for companies. Especially in the inter-company context, decisions must be made as quickly and correctly as possible. To enable good decision-making processes data must be processed and provided in a targeted manner. Currently, however, the necessary transparency is often lacking within the supply chains. In this article, a software-based assistance system for decision support on supply chain level is presented that aims to increase the transparency and efficiency of the decision-making process. A concept for decision support on supply chain level is presented. This paper focuses on the conceptual linkage of relevant decisions and data. Therefore, indicators are identified and linked with the relevant decisions. Moreover, a suitable way of visualizing the identified indicators for each decision in a user-friendly manner is defined. These results are then used to implement the software tool.
Data Driven Services
(2020)
Als größter Berufsverband für Beschäftigte im Kundendienst und im After-Sales-Service innerhalb der DACH-Region verbindet der Kundendienst-Verband Deutschland e. V., kurz KVD, unterschiedliche Akteure
im Thema Service, so zum Beispiel aus Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft. Dabei gelingt es dem KVD nicht nur, seine Mitglieder untereinander zu vernetzen, sondern ihnen stets brandaktuelle Inhalte anzubieten.
Die enge Kooperation mit Forschungseinrichtungen ermöglicht es dem KVD und seinen Mitgliedern immer wieder, neue Themen und nützliche Werkzeuge für die praktische Anwendung zur Verfügung zu stellen.
In diesem Paper wird eine Architektur für Kommunikationsnetze für industrielle Anwendungen vorgestellt, die neue 5G-Technologien mit vorhandener Kommunikationstechnik auf der Feldbusebene kombiniert. Diese Architektur verbindet private und öffentliche Mobilfunknetze mit lokalen Funktechnologien, um einen flexiblen Aufbau zu ermöglichen, der in der Lage ist, viele industrielle Anwendungsfälle zu unterstützen. Es wird gezeigt, wie die Errungenschaften, die mit der neuen 5G-Technologie eingeführt werden, einen großen Bereich der industriellen Anforderungen erfüllen können. Weiterhin werden relevante Anwendungsfälle beschrieben und eine Gesamtsystemarchitektur vorgeschlagen, welche nicht nur die technischen, sondern auch die funktionalen Anforderungen, welche von den spezifischen Anwendungen heutiger und zukünftiger Herstellungsprozesse gestellt werden, erfüllen kann.
Unvorhergesehene Störungen gefährden in vielen Fällen den Kundenliefertermin. Die Produktionssteuerung hat die Aufgabe, effektiv und effizient auf diese kurzfristigen Störungen zu reagieren. Der Entscheidungsprozess beruht jedoch häufig auf einer qualitativen Analyse einer komplexen Situation anhand subjektiver Einschätzungen durch den Produktionsplaner. Zur Verbesserung der Entscheidungsfindung stellt dieser Beitrag eine App vor, die auf Basis von Echtzeitdaten und einer Simulation des Produktionssystems eine quantitative Entscheidungsfindung ermöglicht.
The industrial food production is currently caught between the increas-ing demands of numerous stakeholders, economic profitability and the challenges of digitization. A solution to face these various challenges can be seen in the aggregation of data into higher-value, independent data products that can be of-fered and sold on a buyer's market. Large amounts of heterogeneous data are already available in the value chain of the industrial food production, e.g. throughout the data-driven harvesting of primary products, further processing by interconnected production facilities and the information-intensive product distri-bution to end consumers. However, the data is usually only evaluated and used locally for the optimization of internal processes or, at the most, within compre-hensive partnerships. The purpose of this paper is to identify new revenue oppor-tunities for current and future players in the industrial food production by using data as an independent economic good (data products). For this purpose, scenar-ios for the development and use of data products via Industrial Internet of Things platforms are developed for a food technical reference process, the industrial chocolate production and its value chain. On this basis, examples for different types of data products and their value propositions are derived. The results can not only serve food producers and relevant stakeholders but all industrial produc-ers as an input for the future, yield-increasing orientation of their business models.
Die Variantenfließfertigung ermöglicht die Herstellung konfigurierbarer Produkte bei kurzen Durchlaufzeiten und geringen Beständen. Im Vergleich zu anderen Organisationsformen der Produktion gestaltet sich die Produktionsplanung und -steuerung aufgrund der Variantenvielfalt als anspruchsvoll. Im vorliegenden Beitrag wird der erste Schritt einer Methodik vorgestellt, welche für die Konfiguration der Reihenfolgeplanung entwickelt wurde.
Progress in the development of small electric and hybrid aircraft promises business opportunities for thin-haul air mobility services. In order to develop demand-oriented flight plan scenarios for Germany, this paper presents a model to estimate the marked volume of thin-haul air mobility. To quantify the potential demand, our model includes the steps of trip generation, trip distribution and mode choice. Trip generation and distribution takes place between 412 geographic subdivisions of Germany and is based on calibrated traffic forecast data for the year 2030. For the first time the five relevant modes of transport, namely: car, intercity train, intercity bus, commercial aircraft and thin-haul air mobility services, have been included in one model. The step of choosing the transport mode is implemented via a generalized cost approach, taking into account travel costs and travel time. Additionally, route modeling of all transport modes is enhanced by real market data using large-scale data readouts of web interfaces. As primary result we predict a market share of 6 % or 81 million trips per year for thin-haul air mobility services. The demand concentrates on a small number of airports: 30 % of the trips are estimated to be between only 20 airports. Hubs and main routes are identified to offer the potential for scheduled air services.
Auf Basis einer systematischen Literaturanalyse wurden insgesamt 11 Kennzahlen identifiziert, welche die Grundlage zur Beschreibung der operativen Leistungsfähigkeit von Unternehmen bilden. Die Kennzahlen wurden in die vier Leistungsdimensionen Effizienz, Qualität, Zeit und Flexibilität eingeteilt.
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.
More and more manufacturing companies are starting to transform the transaction-based business model into a customer value-based subscription business to monetize the potential of digitization in times of saturated markets. However, historically evolved, linear acquisition processes, focusing the transactionoriented product sales, prevent this development substantially. Elemental features of the subscription business such as recurring payments, short-term release cycles, data-driven learning, and a focus on customer success are not considered in this approach. Since existing transactional-driven acquisition approaches are not successfully applicable to the subscription business, a systematic approach to an acquisition cycle of the subscription business in the manufacturing industry is presented, aiming at a long-term participative business. Applying a grounded theory approach, a task-oriented model for themanufacturing industry was developed.
The model consisting of five main tasks and 14 basis tasks serves as best practice to support manufacturing companies in adapting or redesigning acquisition activities for their subscription business models.
Inhaltsangabe Band:
Die vernetzte Digitalisierung hat die produzierende Industrie fundamental verändert. Im Rahmen dessen eröffnen sich produzierenden Unternehmen kontinuierlich neue Chancen, in einem zunehmend dynamischen und durch das Internet geprägten Wettbewerb, wirtschaftliche Erfolge zu erzielen. Durch die veränderten Rahmenbedingungen der vernetzten Digitalisierung müssen produzierende Unternehmen jedoch neue Ansätze für die Organisation der digitalen Transformation verfolgen: Sie müssen die neue Führungsaufgabe Digitalisierungsmanagement gestalten. Dabei muss das Digitalisierungsmanagement eine breite Aufgabenvielfalt abdecken.
Dieses Buch befähigt produzierende Unternehmen die digitale Transformation erfolgreich zu gestalten. Dazu werden Nutzen und Funktionsweisen der wesentlichen Aufgaben des Digitalisierungs- und Informationsmanagements praxisnah dargestellt. Ein spezifisch für produzierende Unternehmen, die eine digitale Transformation anvisieren, entwickeltes Digitalisierungs- und Informationsmanagement-Modell verknüpft schließlich die Inhalte.
Das vorliegende Buch ist als ein Nachschlagewerk für Führungskräfte und Entscheider entwickelt worden, die die Herausforderungen der Realisierung von digitalen Geschäftsmodellen, digitalisierten Produkten und digitalen Geschäftsprozessen angehen wollen. Die Methoden in diesem Buch helfen dabei, die richtigen Managementaufgaben zu verfolgen und diese in der Unternehmensorganisation umzusetzen. Dabei werden auch die Schnittstellen zwischen dem strategischen Digitalisierungsmanagement und dem taktischen bis operativen Informationsmanagement behandelt. Das Buch bietet einen schnellen und einfachen Zugriff auf die wichtigsten Methoden und viele unterstützende Beispiele. Es ist Teil der Reihe „Handbuch Produktion und Management“ und ergänzt dessen Ordnungsrahmen.
(Quelle: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-662-63758-6)
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.
Blockchain-Lösungen sind bisher vor allem im Finanzbereich bekannt
und erfolgreich. Doch ihre unbestreitbaren Vorteile bieten weit darüber
hinaus Potenzial und machen sie auch für industrielle Anwendungen
interessant. Vor allem Lieferketten mit ihren komplexen Strukturen,
vielen Beteiligten sowie verschiedensten Material-, Informations- und
Finanzströmen lassen sich mit der Technologie erheblich effizienter
gestalten.
Mehr als nur ein Hype
(2021)
Blockchain-Lösungen sind bisher vor allem im Finanzbereich bekannt und erfolgreich. Doch ihre unbestreitbaren Vorteile bieten weit darüber hinaus Potenzial und machen sie auch für industrielle Anwendungen interessant. Vor allem Lieferketten mit ihren komplexen Strukturen, vielen Beteiligten sowie verschiedensten Material-, Informations- und Finanzströmen lassen sich mit der Technologie erheblich effizienter gestalten.
Künstliche Intelligenz (KI) hat sich über die letzten Jahre stetig zu einem Thema mit strategischer Priorität für Unternehmen entwickelt. Das zeigt sich nicht zuletzt in der gesteigerten Investitionsbereitschaft deutscher Unternehmen in KI-Projekte. Wirtschaftliche Akteure haben erkannt, dass durch eine sinnvolle Nutzung von KI-Technologien Wettbewerbsvorteile erzielt werden können. Die vorliegende Studie legt das Augenmerk auf den industriellen Einsatz einer KI-Technologie, die bereits heute von vielen Unternehmen erfolgreich genutzt wird: Die natürliche Sprachverarbeitung (engl. Natural Language Processing, kurz NLP). Die wirtschaftlichen Potenziale der Technologie liegen dabei in ihrer Fähigkeit, betriebliche Abläufe zu automatisieren und die Schnittstelle zwischen Mensch und Maschine zu verbessern und zu vereinfachen. Ziel der Studie ist es, die Potenziale der NLP-Technologie für Unternehmen nutzbar zu machen, indem konkrete Anwendungsfälle und allgemeine Handlungsempfehlungen sowie Nutzen und Risiken aufgezeigt werden.
Smart Services als Enabler von Subscription-Geschäftsmodellen in der produzierenden Industrie
(2022)
[Der Sammelband] Widmet sich den in Wissenschaft und Praxis aktuell intensiv diskutierten Fragestellungen zu Smart Services. Befasst sich mit Geschäftsmodellen, Erlösmodellen und Kooperationsmodellen von Smart Services. Geht auf branchenspezifische Besonderheiten von Smart Services ein. (link.springer.com)