Open Access

Driven by different trends, such as digitalization, the number of companies aiming for successful business transformation is increasing, while new structures and systems are paving the way. Strategic agile management systems offer significant potential benefits given the increasing speed of the evolving environment in which organizations find themselves these days. To select and implement the appropriate strategic agile management system, companies need to understand the underlying theoretical principles to be able to select the most suitable for the respective company and to introduce it based on individual adaption. Within this paper, a morphology is presented to improve theoretical knowledge about strategic agile management systems. Creating a common understanding of strategic agile management systems and their current areas of application creates a suitable frame of reference for future research projects.

The operation of CNC milling is expensive because of the cost-intensive use of cutting tools. The wear and tear of CNC tools influence the tool lifetime. Today’s machines are not capable of accurately estimating the tool abrasion during the machining process. Therefore, manufacturers rely on reactive maintenance, a tool change after breakage, or a preventive maintenance approach, a tool change according to predefined tool specifications. In either case, maintenance costs are high due to a loss of machine utilization or premature tool change. To find the optimal point of tool change, it is necessary to monitor CNC process parameters during machining and use advanced data analytics to predict the tool abrasion. However, data science expertise is limited in small-medium sized manufacturing companies. The long operating life of machines often does not justify investments in new machines before the end of operating life. The publication describes a cost-efficient approach to upgrade legacy CNC machines with a Tool Wear Prediction Upgrade Kit. A practical solution is presented with a holistic hardware/software setup, including edge device, and multiple sensors. The prediction of tool wear is based on machine learning. The user interface visualizes the machine condition for the maintenance personnel in the shop floor. The approach is conceptualized and discussed based on industry requirements. Future work is outlined.

Since 2016, the “Digital in NRW” Competence Centre has been supporting SMEs in the manufacturing industry in designing their individual digital transformation. With an Industry 4.0 maturity assessment, we define the status quo of SMEs, derive SME-specific measures from this, develop a digitalization roadmap and accompany the SME transformation. This paper presents the results of the four-year SME support. By analyzing the results of all maturity assessments, potential analysis and design workshops, we present the most frequent and most effective measures for a successful digital transformation of SMEs. The result of the paper is an action guideline for SMEs to initiate their own digital transformation based on formalized experience.

The fifth generation of mobile communication (5G) is expected to bring immense benefits to automated guided vehicles by improving existing respectively enabling 5G-distinctive network control systems, leading to higher productivity and safety. However, only 1% of production companies have fully deployed 5G yet. Most companies currently lack an understanding of return on investment and of technical use-case benefits. Therefore, this paper analyses the influence of 5G on an automated guided vehicle use case based on a five-step evaluation model. The analysis is conducted with a use case in the Digital Experience Factory in Aachen. It shows a difference of net present value between 4G and 5G of 1.3 M€ after 10 years and a difference of return of investment of 66%. Furthermore, analysis shows an increase of mobility (13%), productivity (20%) and safety (136%). This indicates a noticeable improvement of a 5G-controlled automated guided vehicle compared to a 4G-controlled automated guided vehicle.

Electricity generated by wind turbines (WT) is a pillar of the transition to renewable energy [1]. In order to economically utilize WTs, operating and maintenance costs, which account for 25% of total electricity generation costs in onshore WTs, are a focus of cost reduction activities [2]. A prescriptive maintenance approach can support in achieving this goal. Prescriptive maintenance is a maintenance approach, where asset condition data is collected and analyzed to recommend specific actions to prevent breakdowns and reduce downtimes. However, the processing and analysis of data is quite complex. Especially unstructured data (such as comments of service technicians in free text fields) is often left unused, as companies, mostly SMEs lack the capacity to carry out these analyses. In this work we propose an approach to utilize the information from service reports, maintenance reports as well as status records from SCADA systems for the development of a prescriptive maintenance approach to onshore WTs. To achieve this, an ontology was utilized in this approach to codify implicit knowledge of service technicians and aid in making unstructured data usable for further analysis. The ontology was used to link historical service and maintenance reports with status codes, thus enabling automated analysis. In interviews with WT topic experts and through further research, damage mechanisms and corresponding maintenance measures were identified and a measure catalogue was developed to support service and maintenance activities. The recognition of the root cause of problems allows for a prescriptive maintenance approach that recommends targeted actions to reduce downtimes and optimize maintenance activities, it also allows to effectively control the outcome of maintenance activities and optimize their execution.