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Trends such as Industry 4.0 or the Internet of Things lead to increased networking and integration of various data in the production. At the same time, the increased networking posses challenges regarding security issues. Negative examples involve the unsecured connection of various programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that are reachable through the Internet. In part, but also inadvertently, there are additional risks for the production plant. The reasons are the comfortable maintenance of plants as well as using external support for complex problems.

Information security on the Internet is a key challenge. Each IoT connected device is exposed to potential manipulation and interference. Therefore, companies are looking for solutions to minimize their data risks. Sigfox offers a dedicated network for data collection and transfer that serves as a protective layer between the devices and the cloud app. Sigfox devices do not communicate over the Internet and yet their big data reaches the cloud. The network ensures very high system-intrinsic security, which is ideal for industrial application scenarios.

Autonomous transportation systems represent a significant use case for the implementation of industry 4.0. The transparency of logistics parameters, especially the replenishment time, can be increased and controlled efficiently compared to conventional material supply based on milkrun concepts. This article describes a systematic approach to ensure the process capability of the replenishment time for logistics processes based on autonomous transportation systems applying a six sigma approach. The case study has been performed in a real production environment in the automotive supplier industry.

Software development of industrial robots requires interdisciplinary knowledge and technical experience. Due to the heterogeneity of the manufacturer-dependent programming languages and tools, robot programming remains highly complex, although robots themselves are flexible and can be used for a wide range of applications. To support different roles during the development, including component provider, application developer, system integrator and end user, a model based approach was developed in the research project ReApp. The data exchange format AutomationML was used for the modelling of robot components and systems. Based on domain ontologies, the AutomationML models were processed semantically and converted to a machine-interpretable information model, from which source code was generated.

The economic operation of the offshore wind energy turbines is of fundamental importance for the industry. Due to the prevailing weather conditions at sea these operations require optimal plannung and control. This contribution presents the work process and information requirements of an offshore service company. Suitable industry 4.0 technologies are identified to increase information transparency for the supply chain. In conjunction with a cooperative planning and control instrument, a reliable basis of decison-making for the execution of service assignments can be provided. This constitutes a direct contribution to a reduction of operation costs for offshore service logistics.

Due to the increasing complexity of cross-company transportation, it becomes more and more difficult to ensure a correct inventory of loading tackles throughout the entire supply chain. The use of a state-of-the-art SaaS (software as a service) solution simplifies, standardize and automate inventory management to reduce administrative effort as well as resources of time and money.

Smart glasses are recognized as a promising technology for supporting operational processes in the logistics sector. In particular, the application of Pick-by-Vision is capable of increasing the efficiency, quality and ergonomics of manual order picking. But first industrial pilots reveal problems concerning the implementation as well. To provide an overview a comprehensive requirement analysis is conducted and the results are presented.

In the course of digitization, the complexity and instability of business networks are considerably increasing. This has also serious effects on intralogistics. Under VUCA conditions, intralogistic systems develop into open, decentralized and self-organization networks of information-processing units. They adapt to the dynamic changes of their environment, by increasing their inner and outer varieties in a preventive manner. Digital technologies are not in a position to adequately control non-deterministic logistic systems; this task is essentially left to the working man. In order to overcome the challenges, appropriate models and methods of preventive work design are developed in the PREVILOG project. The paper presents cybernetic basics and preventive work design principles.

Since the financial crisis, industrial companies need to deal with an increase of uncertainty and volatility. Therefore, the concept of agile production is discussed strongly as solution concept to react on this situation. Product design and its influences on an agile production is one important lever to increase agility. This article tries to focus on that topic and presents a Design-for-Agility approach.

Companies often do not have a clear view of all steps along the value chain. Many different factors are involved from receipt of the goods through to the finished product and actual delivery. Accordingly, the companies themselves only have a limited influence on the supply chain, resulting for example from dependence on suppliers at various points. However, in this context there is a wide range of possibilities for improving different processes in the warehouse. It is only the material flow in production, which accounts for a large share of the daily processes in a factory, that a company ideally manages down to the last detail. To this end, companies often use software solutions to keep an overview and implement successful control of the large number of operations. Graphic interfaces give a precise depiction of the workflows within a warehouse, thus revealing possible starting points for the companies to take action.