Adaptability

Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) combined with a dynamically interconnected assembly system promise high flexibility and transformability to cope with an increasingly dynamic and complex business environment. Existing approaches for planning AGVs operate on a high level of aggregation so that they do not address the transformability of the transport system itself. Therefore, this article introduces a planning approach that explicitly addresses the transformability of the system by planning on component level. The application is demonstrated within a Greenfield project of the worldwide active pump manufacturer WILO SE.

The positive benefits of decentralized decisionmaking structures in production systems were already discussed in the 1990s. But it is only in recent years that the technologies required for implementation have reached sufficient market maturity to be able to implement corresponding concepts efficiently. In this way, the units involved can be enabled to participate “intelligently” in processes by means of autonomous technologies. The question of the actors actively involved in decentralised decisionmaking and implementation as well as the concrete design of decentralised production structures is of great importance. This article illustrates the importance of autonomy for decentralised production control and shows which performance actors involved in the process have the necessary capabilities to act autonomously.

As Industry 4.0 Technologies are swiftly spreading in global economy and enterprises are cooperating in supply chain networks, the question arises how fit these networks are for the imminent challenges. The contribution presents a method which allows to evaluate the industry 4.0-readiness for the example of an automotive network. As a first part, a qualitative analysis is carried out by means of an Industry 4.0-compass. Subsequently, a performance indicator based quantitative analysis is used to assess the industry 4.0-readiness of the automotive network.

Whilst bIoTope should be understood as a highly flexible and dynamic ecosystem capable of seamlessly integrating arbitrary proprietary IoT platforms, it nevertheless builds upon several core components, which provide essential functionality. Those functionalities referenced in this article, are agnostic to other ecosystem-external systems. Inside of the ecosystem, a micro-service-architecture MSA approach is applied. Using O-MI for technical Interoperability and O-DF for syntactic and semantic interoperability are foundation pillars of the ecosystem.

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.

Companies have to be thoroughly agile. Agility means that companies must be able to consider two things at the same time: On the one hand, companies have to maintain the quality of their own products and services at all times. Continuous innovations could help with this. On the other hand, companies have to be able to adapt themselves to these permanent changes due to these innovations, whereby the adaptation speed must be as high as possible. The question arises as to what extent the cultural identity of nations play a role in terms of their mutability, flexibility and vitality.

Current advances result in increasingly complex production programs. Through combination of additive manufacturing and Industry 4.0, new elements can be formed and - as a whole - enable to economically manufacture the above mentioned programs. The Bionic Smart Factory 4.0 provides a framework, structuring them in terms of relation and interaction. Their development and implementation is being promoted through their evaluation against the determinants of complex production programs.

The setup and configuration of industrial robots presumes a high degree of expert knowledge due to manufacturer specific control commands and a wide variety of design types. As a result, companies are running robot systems repetitively over long time periods instead of using their inherent flexibility. Therefore, in the research project AKOMI methods are being developed that allow automated setup and solution neutral programming of robot assisted assembly lines.

The technological and demographic change in the automotive industry leads to challenges for competence management. Increasing requirements with regard to professional and methodological competencies, combined with shortened innovation cycles, demand an increasing flexibility in employee trainings. The research project PLUG+LEARN aims at the development of reconfigurable solutions in competence development. Competencies along the automotive value chain are pooled in order to achieve a wide application of the results. This enables an effective cooperation between the actors of the PLUG+LEARN market place.