Autor: Michael Schenk

Given the current and anticipated future economic development in China, annual growth rates around 10 % and the opening of the Chinese market to logistics services, foreign logistics service providers are expecting annual growth of 30 % in this particularly lucrative market segment. One of the greatest challenges is the lack of sufficiently qualified Chinese logistics experts. This presents foreign research organizations and enterprises an opportunity to become active in China.

This paper discusses ideas about and experiences with flexible simulation of real-time data streams generated by production networks when state-of-the-art automatic identification and localization technologies are applied. Flexibility here means the possibility to freely define the objects and their related types of events and statuses that are recorded in production and logistics processes. The data streams generated during simulation can be used to test and compare operational control strategies for processes in production networks in an offline or online mode.

Developing and testing and operating complex machinery and repairing it under time pressure if it breaks down - individuals in many professions have to learn new skills. Moreover, they have to do so as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. Virtual technologies are supporting learning more and more frequently. Operations and procedures on machinery and plants are already taught in individual lessons on the virtual model. They can be repeated as often as desired without the space or time constraints of real machinery and without endangering either operator or plants through incorrect behaviour and can be practiced before a real machine or plant has been constructed.

Today, mechanical and plant engineering companies are already providing service bundles in the form of product-service combinations. These consist of common ranges of services, e.g. for development, customisation, operator, financing or maintenance. As a rule however, the elements of service bundles are developed separately. Moreover, the services offered are often viewed as a necessity demanded by the market. A strategy appearing to promise long-term success is pursued by offering solutions in the form of hybrid products in which service and material good form a symbiotic relationship. Rigorously pursuing this strategy entails sustainably implementing a business process to develop hybrid products in a company. This paper discusses requirements of organizing this business process. Attention is focused on a networked approach to developing material goods and services as well as the incorporation of a mechanical and plant engineering company’s network of relationships.

The international exchange of goods and products is growing steadily. Information technologies now in use are unable to sufficiently organize the flows of goods both more securely and more reliably: Losses from misdirected containers, pallets and luggage run in the tens and hundreds of millions. Modern solutions not only have to provide the capability to positively identify mobile objects of different kinds and in changing environmental conditions but also to localize them, communicate with them, navigate them and control them.