Autor: Sigrid Wenzel

Digital factory, simultaneous engineering and system interoperability are based on collaborative interdisciplinary working processes in an enterprise. According to a study of the workgoup industry 4.0 [1] the implementation of industry 4.0 leads to new collaborative and cooperative behaviour between employees. For academic teaching this implies, that in addition to technical, methodological and IT expertise, collaboration skills must be encouraged. The following article explains the use of physical models to teach collaboration skills by means of the example of factory planning. These models are currently realized or are already in use in teaching at the department for organization of production and factory planning of the University of Kassel.

New and unique tasks are regularly solved in interdisciplinary and sometimes cross-company teams. Thus, the necessary expertise can be combined for the collective success of projects. In this project-specific organizational form the advantages of collective intelligence can be used. Unfortunately, the acquired additional experience in project knowledge is often not systematically rooted in the company after the project expired. There are also specific challenges of SME projects. A project-based networking of expertise in terms of Corporate Capability Management often requires new approaches and tools. The idea for a simulation-based project management with integrated logistics could be forward-looking. It is based e.g. on the development and utilization of reference plans as well as project- and logistic-scenarios. Thereby, step by step experience and process improvements can be integrated.

Planning, design and continuous improvement of today’s complex corporate structures and technical systems require a sophisticated level of extensive know-ledge of technology, processes and IT. To apply planning and simulation tools effectively and efficiently engineers and plant operators have to rise to the challenge to use their knowledge in a goal-oriented way and to expand it within creative processes. Consequently, knowledge is more than ever a key productivity factor and an important component of corporate capital. Against this background, the article discusses possibilities for systematization and standardization in simulation studies and especially approaches to increase productivity in simulation studies by supplying assistance functions as well as systematic evaluation methodologies.

Over the past years the use of simulation methods for designing production systems in the automotive industry has been enforced. To identify trends and needs for action, an online survey was sent to 181 simulation experts and users in the environment of the VDA workgroup Ablaufsimulation. This paper illustrates the results of the survey and points out development steps that are necessary for simulation in general and for the VDA Toolkit in particular.

Changeability is the capability of an organization to establish changes with a lasting effect. The possibility to correctly plan and create changeability of an organization already in the phase of plan-ning is an essential factor to be taken into account when considering changeable logistics systems. For this reason there is a need for conceptual change of established planning methods. In the context of discrete-event simulation, as an established planning method, the modular design of simulation models may be a first step to include changeability into model-based analysis. Against this background, This article discusses possibilities to build modular simulation models and shows how this modular design can be used in practice.

In the manufacturing industry, the digital factory plays a decisive role for modern engineering. By linking all information and data from the various stages of factory planning, an efficient and holistic planning and continuous improvement of products, processes and resources is possible. The use of changed processes and new tools needs other and advanced competencies respectively as well as a continuous learning of involved employees. IT-based and stronger parallelized planning processes require also a change in organization and working culture. This article analyzes how the qualification of employees looks on the face of the digital factory utilizing the management of knowledge and learning.

Preserving and re-using experience and knowledge from employees is a decisive task in industrial engineering. In this context the usage of tools for knowledge management is highly up-to-date, however a concrete implementation starts very unassertively in practise. The article discusses advisability and feasibility of a process-based knowledge management. A method of resolution in form of a knowledge infrastructure is worked out exemplary for the two phases “product planning” and “product design” linking the tools of knowledge management with knowledge-related tasks of the product development process.

Currently the realisation of the Digital Factory as the strategic goal for the next five years has been identified by many manufacturing enterprises. To achieve an integrated system planning and operation, the work is aimed at a comprehensive computer-based modelling of all design characteristics, structures and processes of a factory. This article scrutinises the technique-centred process for the realisation of the Digital Factory, which is currently favoured due to pragmatic reasons, and presents - based on the models in the Digital Factory - a comprehensive integration concept. To ensure the users’ acceptance, a user-oriented process considering enterprise-organisational requirements is preferred.