Adaptability

Enterprises face a plethora of outside influences. Examples include shortening product life cycles, rising cost pressure or increasing number of variants. In order to make arrangements for their factories to remain future-robust, many companies strive for a transformable factory. In order to fully use the change-potential installed, a methodology that allows integrating an employee-oriented view, is indispensable. This contribution presents an approach which renders possible the coordination of employee skills and factory transformability.

The information and communication technology distinguish the modern mechanical and automotive engineering. This is described by the term mechatronics. The development progress of information and communication technologies open up further fascinating perspectives: mechatronic systems with inherent partial intelligence. The term Self-optimization characterizes this perspective. Self-optimizing systems are able to react on changing environmental conditions and to optimize their behaviour autonomously. This contribution presents the paradigm of Self-optimization. The potential of Self-optimization is explained by two examples from the system RailCab.

In many cases, digital engineering is the only realistic answer to important trends in industry. This includes increasingly customized products, decentralized value chains, increasing complexity and functionality of products as well as the need to reduce the time to market. Digital Engineering has already resulted in many technology-driven changes of the product development process. Probably the most important change is the ability to execute some of the iteration loops of development and test completely in the virtual environment. Further improvements can only be achieved by simultaneously combining development and simulation tools from many different domains, such as mechanical engineering, physics simulation, and software engineering. This article identifies current research issues in the field of distributed interoperable testing environments. Moreover, two examples of current applications are given to illustrate what functionalities can already be utilized today.

Digital watermarking has been developed for copyright protection and fighting piracy in the domain of digital media. Due to recent improvements regarding watermarking robustness against printing of images or analogue distribution of audio and video, also the protection of common, non-virtual goods has been enabled. Information can transparently be linked with the goods, providing a protective layer hard to forge or to remove. We discuss recent developments in the area of image watermarking and introduce an algorithm suitable for printing and scanning of packages. Additionally we show typical challenges and solutions for image watermarking caused by typical analogue transformations of marked content.

Planning and control of logistics processes is more and more determined by an increasing complexity of structure of logistics networks and dynamics. However, in many aspects methods and tools for a comprehensive analysis of large-scale logistics networks are missing. This set of problems is the object of investigation in the new research project ‘Stability, Robustness and Approximation of Dynamic Large-Scale Networks - Theory and Applications in Logistics Networks’ founded by Volkswagen Foundation. The project will be run in a dual way: Mathematicians from the university of Bremen und the university of Würzburg cooperate with researchers from the field of engineering of the university of Bremen.

Complexity does not emerge from the drawing-board. Complexity evolves through the permanent attempt of an organization to emerge and distinguish itself from the competition. Complexity penetrates a company on many different levels. The battle to control and, if possible, reduce expensive complexity can not be won by just putting up concepts. What is the best concept good for if the corporate management can not realize it? In practice we observe many executives lacking in pragmatic, down to earth approaches. Most managers are not aware of that. Our experience taught us the following: Initiatives for complexity-reduction are successful when continuous, real-time and action-oriented management information-systems are in use during and after the transformation process. The relevant complexity indicators have to be transferred to management and staff. Both must work proactively to reach the goal of complexity reduction. Last but not least all assigned actions for complexity-reduction have ...

A simple production system enables to customer oriented manufacturing with low cost and high costumer service. The most four important ways to a simple production are covered by: • Reduction of the number of items (finished goods, intermediate as well as purchasing parts) • Setting of clear and non-conflicting objectives as well as prioritizing measurements needed • Organizing of a continuous production flow and • Applying monitoring instruments instead of detailed planning and scheduling tools

Adaptability helps to process the necessary alignment between IT architecture and busuness world. The paper describes the concept of adaptability and declares when companies need adaptability and how it can be measured.

More than a fourth of German companies regard flexibility as their main competitive edge. Companies set great store by delivering customized solutions to the customer or to be able to deliver swiftly and on time. Thus the diffusion of organisational concepts which are suited to support adaptability of companies and to realise flexibility advan-tages is increasingly getting into the focus of attention. However, German industry has not yet fully exploited the potential these enablers might have on companies’ flexibility. The development of customized organisational concepts for improving the flexibility might help to further increase companies’ competitive edge.

The laboratory for machine tools WZL of RWTH Aachen University and Scheidt & Bachmann have jointly developed a methodology for product structure oriented continuous improvement of products and processes. The staff members’ manifold experience with complex products is used effectively by a combination of a product structure oriented assessment and a production portfolio oriented interpretation. Hence, experiences are quantified by the metric “additional effort of time per single use”. This additional effort addresses the coordination and correction expenses, which are typically not quantified and handled by variety-neutral surcharges in the calculation scheme. The methodology is working on the basis of “As-Is” data and not as usual on the basis of planning data like in conventional approaches of variant management. The factual composition of the products is used instead. By applying the methodology for several product families, latent optimization potential could be determined ...