Autor: Thomas Knothe

Unforeseen events are increasingly challenging manufacturing companies. Being resilient during crises is becoming a key competence. Serious games (SG) can help make resilience-building processes more transparent. This article derives specific requirements for SG from different phases of resilience and shows how these can be implemented in game mechanics in order to effectively support the training of resilience.

The crises of recent years have highlighted the importance of robust business processes. Even if the concept of robustness is often not clearly defined in the context of entrepreneurial activity, it can certainly be defined on the basis of various factors such as agility, adaptability and resilience. A systematic analysis of robustness and its prerequisites in the corporate context is therefore highly relevant, especially in times characterized by uncertainty.

In order to withstand disruptions manufacturing companies need to improve their robustness. In the past only infrastructures and resources were considered in the context of robustness, neglecting the interconnectedness of processes. However, a consideration of processes in the context of robustness is highly relevant. Process modeling is used for the design and analysis of processes. This paper describes the requirements for modeling methodology and evaluates existing approaches. (Only in German)

Whether it is the availability and costs of raw materials, energy and personnel or simply market and sales options, disruptions are increasingly influencing the business of manufacturing companies. In recent years, it has become clear that robustness, particularly in the face of a wide range of disruptions, cannot be countered by managing critical resources alone. From the authors' point of view, the design of robust corporate processes is part of the comprehensive approach. In this article, the importance of robust processes in the context of critically changing resources and infrastructures is demonstrated. (Only in German)

To show SMEs a way to identify changes at an early stage, the interactive situation awareness monitor developed by Fraunhofer IPK is used. This gives companies an individually structured overview about their environment and their company (e. g. order situation). The area of the corporate environment is currently being expanded to include the compa- ny-specific component of automatic recognition of context-related data in order to provide relevant information to a company automatically. For this purpose, a machine learning model is developed and trained using company-specific data sets. First- ly, it is necessary to create the data sets with relevant and irrelevant environment information. For that, the PESTEL analysis is applied in this paper. Further- more, advantages and disadvantages of the analy- sis for generating data sets are discussed.

Holistic production systems (HPS) do not only produce positive effects in large companies - they also have an impact on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), such as improved adherence to delivery dates. However, HPS cannot be copied from large companies to SMEs due to different initial situations and circumstances. The introduction of HPS means a high effort for SMEs. In this paper, an approach is presented on how a bionic principle can make HPS less costly and at the same time more effective for SMEs.

The SARS-CoV-2-crisis has brought many companies into existential distress. The sudden loss of suppliers and customers as well as short-term changes in regulations and relevant information sources pose challenges for companies. The linking and visualization of information from the corporate environment with internal capabilities remain an unsolved problem. This article shows how a situation picture can help companies to act in a goal-oriented manner.

Trends towards more customized products and shorter product life cycles are creating challenges, which companies are trying to meet with the use of Industrie 4.0 technologies. The digitalization and automation associated with this is causing employees in the manufacturing industry in particular to fear changes in work processes and requirements. This paper proposes four key socio-technical design measures to enable enterprises to cope with the new demands of human work in Industrie 4.0 - and thus to counteract fears. The focus is on increasing entrepreneurial agility and expanding employee skills.

Enterprise Modelling techniques and the associated visual languages become more important to support new approaches for business transformation and the development of ‘smart’ organisations. User-related holistic enterprise modelling requires capturing a multitude of enterprise aspects, business processes, inter- and intra-organisational integration as well as active knowledge management. These requirements are today mostly resolved with single non-interoperating modelling tools. The paper describes a generic extendible solution, the Unified Enterprise Modelling Language (UEML) for the interchange of enterprise models in a neutral format. The benefits of UEML have been demonstrated with three commercial modelling tools MO²GO, e-Magim and Metis.