Design

A robust and resilient supply chain is a critical success factor for the competitiveness of manufacturing companies. However, today’s supply chain faces various challenges, such as higher complexities and increasing dynamics coming from megatrends (i. e. globalization and sustainability). The medium-sized drive technology industry, with its global supply chains and high customer requirements, is particularly affected by these challenges. Therefore, digitalization initiatives are crucial. This article analyzes current digitalization projects in the drive technology industry in order to identify relevant trends and fields of application. Synthesized from the industry's target picture for higher resilience/ flexibility, greater transparency and more sustainability along the supply chain, these provide guidance for medium-sized companies and their digitalization strategies. (Only in German)

Technology is disruptive when it leads to fundamentally new business models, products and production concepts. It is not just about the technology. Disruption only occurs when new technology is used in the context of a new business model or in fundamentally changed processes. Cyber-physical systems can be used disruptively. (Only in German)

Germany is the largest European trading partner of the People's Republic of China. The main exports are chemical products, machinery, motor vehicles and electrical engineering. However, German companies are finding it difficult to gain access to the Chinese B2C-market. E-commerce, which has been expanded in recent years, can enable German companies to enter the Chinese custom- er market. The article presents the situation of e-commerce in China and shows relevant support offers of the platform operators, which, however, can lead to economic dependency. For German companies, it seems advantageous to deal with the principles of success of Chinese e-commerce in order to implement them in their traditional markets.

The introduction of new Industry 4.0 technologies is changing job characteristics in many manual industrial sectors, especially in production and logistics, through automation and digitization. Depending on the extent and degree of maturity, these changes are perceived differently by employees and can have both positive and negative effects on job satisfaction and motivation. This article uses the example of workplaces in in-house logistics to highlight how their characteristics change as a result of the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies. It also presents a process model that can serve as a decision-making aid for companies to consider important implications for the successful transformation process and to pursue the human-centric design of manual, technically supported workplaces.

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the additional challenges that events face in terms of appropriate crowd management. This paper is dedicated analyzing these challenges and existing approaches for the safe operation of events during pandemics. Based on this, an innovative framework is presented that uses intelligent crowd analysis and is applicable to an environment with volatile groups. In addition, the specifiv use case of trade fair events is considered in this framework.

Supported by an intelligent assistance system, the sustainability and digitalisation of the tideindependent Industriehafen Bremen can be increased. To guarantee port security, a constant level of the isolated harbour is essential. There is great potential for increasing energy efficiency if the lock naturally waters the harbour basin at times of high tide instead of employing a pump station. This contribution shows how artificial intelligence and innovative software systems were used to develop an assistance system to improve existing procedures without making extensive changes to the existing port infrastructure. (Only in German)

Artificial intelligence (AI) is already an important part of business models and processes of many companies. In the future, AI systems will pro- foundly change our working environment. AI systems can develop completely new potential for companies in a wide variety of sectors and domains - especially in industry. Existing busi- ness models can be optimized along the value chain by optimizing production flows and processes or avoiding production downtimes with predictive maintenance. At the same time, AI systems can enable completely new business models and thus radically change existing mar- ket structures through new players. The AI economy of tomorrow will be more individual, more precise and more sustainable: Competitive value creation without AI will not be possible in many areas of industry.

Companies must increase their flexibility and enable high product customization and variety to meet market demands. In assembly, this requires a large number of special machines, which leads to high investments and space requirements. This paper presents a concept for a modular, reconfigurable assembly system that allows unrestricted connection of individual modules. It is shown how such a system can be located in the RAMI4.0 framework and fulfills changeability requirements on different production levels. (Only in German)

As early as 1997, Christian Lindner, now Germany's Minister of Finance, knew that crises and problems are "also just thorny opportunities. What at the time seemed more like a rhetorical, flowery battle cry from a brash young entrepreneur is, in essence, still a resilient, psychological fact today. Shocking strokes of fate or other drastic experiences often literally pull the rug out from under people - and change their perspective on their own lives. However, this forced change of perspective can also be a real opportunity for change for the better, if one has learned to deal with crises and to recognize and seize the opportunities hidden in them.

Manufacturing SMEs are structurally di erent from other companies and therefore have special requirments for Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and the associated software selection. Process models must therefore be adapted. For the identication of requirements, a systematic categorization based on existing models was performed. With the help of an existing market research platform, further selection steps were developed in order to provide a useful and easy-to-use tool for SMEs, which enables them to select efficiently sufficient MES-software according to their needs.