I4S+ content for subscribers only

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.

Solid forming companies are always faced with the challenge of producing high-quality products that meet the strict requirements of the customers. The quality has to be reproducible despite fluctuations occurring along the value chain. In order to meet the requirements, solutions for an improved process stability and quality are needed. This paper presents a data-driven approach that aims to adapt quality fluctuations. Thus, process data is modeled in-memory in a multidimensional database. Based on the results of an online analytical processing, the process is controlled in real-time.

The Increasing digitization forces companies to deal with their opportunities and challenges. The study underlying this article identifies the economic potential of technological trends and provides an inventory of the current situation in Industry 4.0. To this end, a total of 106 industrial companies have made a self-assessment of their current maturity levels of various technologies in their company and their current and future economic significance. This results in valuable insights for companies in the manufacturing industry, so that they can better deal with the range of different approaches and concepts.

Success factors that had long driven China’s economic boom have lost their legitimacy gradually. The emergence of the competitive indigenous technology houses in IT, telecommunications and software industries in the past two decades has made China’s industrial digitalisation feasible, which the nation would urgently need to base its further growth more on technology and innovation. Consequently, China’s economic performance would become more solid and sustainable. Internet+ predicts the general direction of digitalisation in China’s industries and represents the concept that is currently enthusiastically debated by the economists, politicians and in the media. The integration of information technology with other manufacturing industries is particularly emphasised in this context. The article examines the background and the terminology, takes a look at the market model and some technical issues of Internet+. A case study accompanies the “excursion” to China, in order to give ...

Due to the high competition on the world market, companies look for unique characteristics for their products. One opportunity is to establish a closer relationship to the customer by giving him the possibility to make last-minute change requests. This approach provides a possibility to discuss such a request at a great distance via Augmented Reality. The objective is to evaluate its feasibility and its costs on short notice and in cooperation with the customer.