Autor: Thomas Fischer

Industrie 4.0 with the digitisation of products and processes offers companies a large pool of information for process optimization. In many cases these information cannot be used directly in the textile industry, as raw materials are subject to natural fluctuations and the influencing factors and interactions of many product and process parameters are only partially known. In this contribution, an approach is presented that combines information from production with the experience of the employees and thus supports product and process optimization. The approach is based on the machine learning method “Case-Based Reasoning”.

Chinese industrial companies have evolved into serious competitors for German companies. The success of companies such as Lenovo, Haier, Huawei or CIMC is a clear proof of their competitiveness. What is interesting is that they do not follow the traditional Western management principles. The competitive behaviour of Chinese companies differs from Western companies similar to the Japanese with their revolutionary management concepts such as Lean Management, Total Quality Management or Kaizen. The lack of knowledge on Chinese competitive behaviour often leads Western managers to making the wrong decisions in terms of sustaining or extending their market position as opposed to Chinese competitors. This article gives a detailed description of the competitive behaviour of Chinese companies and offers a guideline for managers on how to deal with emerging Chinese challengers.

In the scope of European Community research projects at ITV Denkendorf new approaches for the management of Dynamically Networked Enterprises have been examined. New conceptions for coordination and planning integration within value added communities in enterprise networks have been developed. They have been implemented on e-business platforms with the help of newly developed knowledge-oriented methodologies for network analysis and design. The article describes the conceptional approaches and highlights the role of knowledge classes for design and management of value added partnerships. Finally, an outlook towards the future design of knowledge repositories for networks is given.