Autor: Nele Brenner

Micro technological areas such as micro system or medical technology generate an increasing demand for micro parts. Besides high precision manufacturing processes for parts with a size of a few micrometers to millimetres, their production and assembly needs suitable handling technologies. This paper addresses these handling technologies and describes the principles and boundaries for gripping, conveyance, separation and sorting of micro objects.

Due to the increased product miniaturization, a number of new applications and market opportunities open up for mechanical micro-manufacturing. In the manufacturing process with part dimensions less than one millimeter and tolerances in the micrometer range occur so-called “size effects”. These prevent a simple scaling of processes known methods from the macro level and lead to an increased occurrence of quality deviations. In conclusion, the process capability according to ISO 21747 is affected and therefore the application of statistical process control (SPC) is more difficult. In this paper, the interaction between technical and logistical quality objectives in terms of logistical quality control are analyzed at the example of micro cold forming. Thereby, methods of statistical process control and fuzzy control are used.

There are many commercial software applications to support business processes. More and more companies, however, rely on open source alternatives, because there is now a wide range of sophisticated applications for classical business functions. But how good is the royalty-free alternative, for whom is it appropriate and what to look for? The following article provides a glimpse into the world of open source and introduces some tools and applications.

The following short market survey presents interfaces between services in industry and logistic of five different providers. Main topics in the survey were the use of IT-Systems, connection with cooperation partners, challenges in the Supply Chain and trends concerning the future of industrial services.

The shortening of both time to market und product life cycle in combination with an increase of cost pressure, demand a fast and flexible product development process. The idea of simultaneous engineering is to gain time by treating product, process and resources in parallel and thus discovering discrepancies faster and adjusting the necessary factors. In order to establish an efficient knowledge management a wiki platform, here acting as a social software, is introduced. It serves as a centre of navigation within the process chain and supports the communication between the subprojects. Content can be edited by any member of the research project and may be discussed and changed by others. Its fast and free implementation qualifies the wiki tool and offers a secure and easy to handle platform.