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Traditional budgeting often resembles a marathon full of spreadsheets, manual reconciliations and time-consuming data collection. However, modern companies need agile, data-driven solutions that allow for transparency, efficiency and strategic foresight. Digital technologies such as digital twins, dashboards and process mining initiate this possibility: they transform the budgeting process from a static set of figures to a dynamic, simulation-capable management tool. Instead of getting lost in detailed work, companies can use them to analyze processes in real time, simulate scenarios and make well-informed decisions.

As environmental challenges such as climate change and resource scarcity intensify, with Earth Overshoot Day highlighting overconsumption, the circular economy emerges as a crucial solution. Legislation at the national and EU level obliges companies to become more sustainable. Simultaneously, the circular economy strengthens economic resilience, promotes innovation and creates competitive advantages. However, the impact on the labor market is controversial, as fewer primary resources and new products are needed. Sustainable corporate management requires a balanced consideration of the triple bottom line: Planet, People, and Profit, treating each as equally important. In contrast to the linear economy, the circular economy follows the ‘cradle to cradle’ principle and integrates the ten R-Strategies of sustainability. These strategies range from refuse (avoidance) and reduce (reduction) to recycling and repurpose (reuse). Companies should identify which strategies can be swiftly ...

The production of cooked ham involves a number of challenges. In production, cuts of meat are put through in a multi-stage curing and cooking process involving brine. This can lead to fluctuations in quality due to structural defects in the meat. The result: the brine is not optimally absorbed. An AI model trained on historical data intends to solve the problem.

Change is necessary for companies to maintain their competitive edge—both digital and ecological change. But while external support is at hand, the drive for change must come from companies themselves. In this issue of Industry 4.0 Science, experts of the Academic Society for Work and Industrial Organization discuss how the real-world application of innovative technologies lead to resource-efficient manufacturing.

Establishing “smart” production processes that are focused on sustainability and based on aggregated data requires a great deal of exchange at various levels. The vertical integration of different production components provides companies with an important basis for achieving their sustainability goals. Digital twins can play a decisive role in driving this process forward.

The planning and implementation of automated warehouses is characterized by high investments and risks. The FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) currently used to reduce risks requires a great deal of effort to conduct, as it has deficits in terms of design and implementation support. These deficits include a predominant focus on the process view without linking this to the design FMEA for automation objects, an insufficient structure for the use of similar repetitive processes and technologies, a lack of automated, parameterized generation of activities, failures and causes, and a lack of integrated test scenario derivation. These deficits lead to unrecognized failures and increase the effort required to carry out the FMEA and develop test scenarios. In this article, we present a generic FMEA model which, among other things, is able to access extensive practical data in the form of knowledge bases and thus resolve the aforementioned deficits.