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In the last few years, quantum computing has achieved new successes, such as Google’s quantum supremacy experiment [1], and has been showing adoption by large industrial firms to tackle complex problems. But what has led up to these developments? What kinds of problems can we expect to be able to solve in the near term with quantum computing? What are the challenges that we encounter with this technology and deploying within industrial settings?

The increasing awareness of energy-neutral production generates the desire for methods for the energetic evaluation and optimization of process chains. In this context, it is not sufficient to consider only the electrical energy demand along the process chain. Within the scope of this work, a procedure for the holistic energetic evaluation and optimization of process chains in machining was developed, which takes into account cross-material flow interactions by adjusting the process parameters.

To ensure competitiveness, it is essential for manufacturing companies to continuously develop innovative products, processes and business models. However, these companies face the challenges of a dynamic and complex business environment. In addition, the relevance of digitalization and sustainability for the manufacturing industry is continuously increasing. This paper describes the newly developed “Sustainable Innovation” approach with relevant fields of action and principles of innovation management, which enables companies to create sustainable value.

Companies sometimes miss opportunities to pursue long-term people-related targets despite short-term performance targets. There is a lack of a measurable variable that shows possibilities for the pursuit of person-related targets. This paper will therefore present an approach based on a simulation-based robustness analysis that makes it possible to integrate long-term targets into production planning. By identifying critical workplaces and determining the tolerable change in the planned personnel deployment, possibilities are shown for pursuing long-term people-related targets.

Industry 4.0 and an increasing digitalisation make it possible to implement decentralised decisions in production and on the shop floor to an ever greater extent. Shopfloor Management is an important enabler for the assumption of decentralised responsibility on the shop floor. This article takes up the approach of autonomous assembly teams and explains how they can be realised step-by-step with the help of goal-oriented shop floor management.

In the apparel industry, with demanding customers and an oversupply of products and shopping options, interactivity and individualization offer important opportunities for differentiation. However, digital business-to-consumer interactions have so far been limited to product configuration and viewing. This paper presents new, digitally supported approaches to integrate the customer into the collection development process of the apparel industry.

Against the backdrop of industrial transformation, medium-sized supplier firms can use digital technologies to optimize their work processes. New digital production systems offer one opportunity for organizing factory processes more efficiently. However, their introduction requires a “corporate culture 4.0” that is characterized by trust in decisions concerning the future design of such systems, despite the involved high uncertainties. Using the example of a digital tool management system, this article presents measures for strengthening such a corporate culture.

Due to the high requirements of customers, logistics service providers are getting under pressure to improve their processes more efficiently and economically. In this context, the advancing automation and digitalization in all industrial sectors are producing a multitude of innovative solutions which will help solving the problems mentioned before [1]. The resulting sociotechnical systems created this way are often not in the focus due to the new technology. In this study, a project procedure will be presented as a recommendation which will help to introduce an innovation − in this case especially for an automatic guided vehicle− in consideration of the aspects of socio-technical systems.

This article presents a concept for the visualization of maintenance processes in Industry 4.0 using the reference architecture model Industry 4.0, in short RAMI 4.0. The mirroring of maintenance processes is done by transferring relevant maintenance terms from various standards into maintenance assets and the corresponding management shells. Here, the role of the human being has to be considered and the dynamic behaviour of maintenance processes has to be mapped. In this respect, this concept presents different methods of visualizing these issues.

Collaborative robots (so-called cobots) enable human-robot collaboration without security fences and are regarded as a promising future technology for manufacturing companies. However, actual market penetration has fallen behind estimations in recent years. A lack of market transparency makes it difficult to identify current barriers, development trends and the potential of cobots in practice. Will this technology become a game-changer or turn out to be a mere hype topic without significant impact on production practice? In this article, we present findings from an empirical market analysis based on secondary data and qualitative interviews with German market experts from business and academia.