Autor: Jivka Ovtcharova

Industry 4.0 is one of the most frequently used term - in context to improved productivity, flexibility and securing the standard of living in Germany and Europe. In spite of the various initiatives that primarily focus on the formulation of the technical requirements, there is currently no common understanding in terms of content and implementation. With the goal to estimate the degree of implementation and define future potential projects, this article defines a comprehensive and pragmatic rating system. Based on industrial studies and individual professional experiences, various criteria are captured and used. There are already two use case demonstrations in real industrial applications.

This paper describes an approach for knowledge based product configuration through the integration of experience and knowledge from the product use phase. The goal of this approach is to enable a faster and software-controlled harmonization of the different customer’s and the manufacturer’s point of view during the pre contract phase. Therefore a case-based reasoning method was developed to be integrated in a rule based product configuration system.

The paper describes a model conceived at the IMI for the management of product and process knowledge in complex multi-project environments. Coming from project and product-related approaches of project, program and portfolio management, an integrated model based on a universal product structure was developed which aims at supporting the transfer of product and process knowledge over enterprise hierarchies and thus to shorten the development time during the development process.