Autor: Günther Schuh

While generative artificial intelligence has gained more visibility and achieved initial successes, it is largely unused in the industry context. In contrast, its development and versatility point to a promising application for industrial manufacturing – especially in cases where complex challenges such as decisionmaking or process optimization are present. Showcasing the various development horizons and several example case studies provides a particularly illuminating illustration of its potential for the field of technology management.

Despite a strong media presence and proven potential benefits, Industrie 4.0 is not yet established in many companies. Industry 4.0 projects often remain in a prototype status and do not deliver long-term added value. The solution is an integrated digital system landscape consisting of a connected, digital infrastructure and a business organization oriented towards Industrie 4.0. Through a four-step approach, this paper presents the foundations that need to be created to enable scalable solutions and realize long-term benefits.

To ensure competitiveness, it is essential for manufacturing companies to continuously develop innovative products, processes and business models. However, these companies face the challenges of a dynamic and complex business environment. In addition, the relevance of digitalization and sustainability for the manufacturing industry is continuously increasing. This paper describes the newly developed “Sustainable Innovation” approach with relevant fields of action and principles of innovation management, which enables companies to create sustainable value.

German industrial companies are suffering from an increasing shortage of skilled workers. In order to secure Germany’s existing competitive advantages, suitable solutions have to be carried out to counter this shortage. Technologies in the context of “Industry 4.0” offer promising solutions. Using this technologies, significant productivity improvements as well as higher resource utilization rates can be achieved. However, the main challenge is to identify the right technical solutions for the specific business challenges. In the following, a systematic approach is presented to face these challenges.

Blockchain technology (BCT) is one of the most promising technologies of the present that will be of even greater importance in the future, especially for manufacturing companies, in order to improve cross-company collaboration and make processes more transparent to the customer. However, BCT is not yet widely used as a trusted tool to ensure a clean and unadulterated flow of information. In addition to the potential, this paper discusses the challenges for the use of BCT and derives a solution concept based on the St. Gallen Management Model that shows potential BCT users possible application scenarios.

Companies, industrial and information technology service providers as well as the FIR at the RWTH Aachen are cooperating to implement the so called enterprise integration center (EICe), the infrastructure for the future project “industry 4.0” of the German government. There are three innovation labs and a demonstration factory ready for use, so research at a productive factory with actual production data becomes reality. With this infrastructure the EICe will approach the future of industrial research.

Many companies have difficulties in generating sustainable success through the introduction of a production system, especially because of the systemic and cultural change process. During his time as head coach Klinsmann changed the DFB from old structures to a modern system and initiated a sustainable development. By comparing the Klinsmann Project with the findings of a benchmarking survey about the successful introduction of production systems conducted by the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering of RWTH Aachen University, clear parallels can be pointed out and hence control levers for a successful change can be identified.

For the competitiveness of R&D it is crucial to enhance not only R&D effectiveness but also R&D efficiency. The broad success of Lean Thinking within manufacturing as Lean Production especially bases upon the extensive work to interpret the basic principles for manufacturing systems and the broad availability of examples. Comparable guiding themes are still missing for Lean Innovation. Lean Innovation today is on its way, getting more systematic. The Lean Innovation approach presented here relies on ten key principles that need to be implemented in R&D. Together they operationalise the guiding theme of Lean Innovation: “Structure Early, Synchronise Easily, Adapt Securely.”

At the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of the RWTH Aachen University, a consumer oriented conflict free and continuous configuration of the product architecture in terms of modular product program development has been developed. The Method is the result of a long year research activity in the field of complexity management and has already been repeatedly successfully applied in industry. Companies can reduce their inner complexity while simultaneously optimizing the fit with customer demands by applying the mentioned method. The described approach is demonstrated both methodically as well as with practical examples.

In production logistics of the machine and tool manufacturig industry RFID-systems are implemented more and more. Enterprises expect an improvement of efficiency in tracing containers and material provision. Implementation of RFID often fails because the processes should be adopted as they are and limits of the technology are not known sufficiently. This article shows the limits of RFID in tracing containers in production and introduces an approach of implementing RFID-supported processes.