Autor: Christopher M. Schlick

Because of the demographic change and the rising number of computer workplaces, there is an increasing need for an age-robust software design. In the first part of this paper three basic studies with prototypical project management software applications are presented which lead to recommendations for an age differentiated design of the human-computer interface. In the second part, project planning with two commercial project management software tools was investigated regarding age differences in order to identify deficits in the de facto standard and derive inferences for further research.

Nowadays, a central challenge for modern production systems is the modulation and alignment to permanent technological, economic, political and social developments. These aspects demand anticipatory acting as well as fast reactions. In this context, working persons mostly are inadequately taken into account to organize a flexible and proactive company. In this article, we develop and assess workers skills in versatile production systems along process sections of a full product development process. We show consequences for vocational structures in training skilled workers in the production line.

Ongoing development of automation technologies and a foreseeable lack of specialized workforces require a better organization of work processes in production and adjacent domains. In this context, an optimized division of functions and labour between humans and robots in terms of direct human-robot cooperation will become a relevant topic. But from a security and labour protection point of view, this is critical, since the strict separation between the robot’s danger area and the employee has to be given up. The earlier and the more effective the planned process can be checked for compliance with security directives, the higher are security and quality levels as well as cost and time savings of the installation. Today’s 3D simulation environments cover industrial robotics comprehensively already: from heavyweight goods handling to arc welding and paint shop applications, diverse scenarios can be modelled and simulated. If necessary, human workers are represented by digital human ...

The Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries”, funded by the German Research Foundation, at the RWTH Aachen University develops solutions to improve the competitiveness of production in Germany. In the future, production systems should be capable of independently adapting to new conditions as a result of the development of cognitive controls, e.g., for robot-aided assembly processes. The tasks of the human operator will thereby focus primarily on system monitoring and direct cooperation with robots. Based on the new requirements regarding this cognitive system, one focus is the development of an ergonomic human-machine-interface.

The Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries”, funded by the German Research Foundation, at the RWTH Aachen University develops solutions to improve the competitiveness of production in Germany. In the future, production systems should be capable of independently adapting to new conditions as a result of the development of cognitive controls, e.g., for robot-aided assembly processes. The tasks of humans will thereby focus primarily on system monitoring and direct cooperation with robots. A system developed at the IAW serves as the foundation for the design of AR-based user interfaces for computer-supported planning of human-robot cooperation processes.

In development projects, a delay in connection with budget overruns is often the consequence of unrealistic scheduling. A simulation based approach for modeling development projects has been developed to support the project planner and will be presented in this paper. This novel approach allows the modeling and simulation of the project-specific structural organization and the process organization as well as the typical non-deterministic project behavior. Therefore, a realistic scheduling and resource allocation of complex development projects can be achieved. The application of the approach in projects of our industrial partners in the chemical industry has shown the suitability of the developed tools.

The successful management of product development projects presents a key success factor that is based on shorter time-to-market times. Development projects are known for their complexity that often leads to failure in keeping deadlines and overspending of project budgets. Innovative methods for prospective project description and complexity determination are necessary in order to meet the demands made of product development projects’ management. Thus, indicators for achieving an optimized development process can already be attained in the project planning phase.

Due to the rising complexity in product and in development projects joint with rising cost pressure the task of project planning becomes more and more demanding. To support the project planner in this task, the IAW developed a method for modelling and simulation of work organizational coherences. This approach afford the planner to compare the consequence of different personnel and financial endowment to the project progression and by this to choose the most efficient constellation.

The goal of the following article is to introduce a new work sampling estimation procedure along with a usage example, as well as to contrast these with the previous procedure. The new procedure enables the gradual estimation of portions of procedure types without iteration loops. In addition, it also delivers precise estimated values and can consistently process a priori information in small random samples. Furthermore, through visualization, additional decision support about the so-called probability density functions is made available for the industrial engineer in the business.

For already cooperating businesses, a question that often occurs is: which potential cooperation activities under the given conditions can be developed and how can they be evaluated? To the authors’ knowledge, there is no structured and validated procedure for the identification and evaluation of existing cooperation potentials. This usually occurs through a subjective assessment by cooperation experts and is highly dependent on the experience of the persons involved. Therefore a method is presented which makes a structured and valid identification of cooperation potentials in existing inter-company relations possible.