Autor: Sabine Bierschenk

“The Digital Factory is no longer a vision, but on the way to reality“, Volkswagen reported on the branch meeting in Ludwigsburg in June 2004. This quote reflects the situation of the Digital Factory in automotive industry in an impressing way. Other branches and enterprise sizes still have to accomplish this step, as an actual study of Fraunhofer IPA shows. Here the question arises how enterprises handle the subject “Introduction of the Digital Factory”. To say it directly - there is no general approach. Depending on the structure of customers and suppliers, the size of enterprise and on the product, individual approaches have to be found and implemented. But what can be pointed out independent of the specific enterprise are the success factors for the introduction of the Digital Factory. This subject is dealt with in the article at hand.

An intensive co-operation and data exchange between members of different disciplines are necessary in planning, conception and development of production plants and processes. Planning failures that are identified too late or different understanding of contents can lead to significant effects, e.g. during starting or ramp-up. In the context of the Digital Factory the Fraunhofer IPA develops organizational and technological solutions for co-operative planning on the base of workflow and knowledge management as well as solutions for interaction, data and tool integration. The aim is the optimisation of planning quality and planning costs.