Automation

Remanufacturing, previously characterized by manual and cost-intensive processes, is a critical step on the way to a resource-efficient circular economy. Industry and research agree that the introduction of Industry 4.0 technologies is the key to the development of automated and economical remanufacturing systems. Based on a systematic literature review, this paper is dedicated to the analysis of promising Industry 4.0 approaches with a focus on the overall process as well as the sub-processes of disassembly and inspection. The results suggest that there is a need for additional knowledge, experience and research in the development and real demonstration of the approaches and their transferability to broader application fields.

Smart Factory is the vision of a production environment in which manufacturing plants and logistics systems organize themselves as far as possible without human intervention. The article describes a project, at the start of which none of the participants created a relation to “Smart Factory” or “Industry 4.0”. Rather, the objective was to drastically reduce the current delivery time of 6-8 weeks. The result is a completely digitized business process from order creation, product development, design, manufacturing as well as processing for “batch size 1” with a reduction in lead time to less than 10 %.

The construction industry has taken first steps towards digitalized processes with the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) systems and the modelling of processes. However, there are few successful examples of IT-supported processes in the largely manual construction phase. This article provides insights from a practical study, which examined the implementation of a workflow management system as a potential next step.

The development of Industry 4.0 changes the role of humans in operations systems. In sociotechnical systems, there is ongoing interaction between humans and technology, impacting human life and work. However, human factors are broadly ignored in research on Industry 4.0 technologies and implementation. In this work, a process model is described that supports the evaluation of the impact of a technology implementation on human factors and performance indicators. This can avoid negative consequences for employees as well as phantom profits and can contribute to a successful digital transformation.

In process engineering, one thinks of production operations that are controlled or regulated by sensors and actuators. And any realization of matter transformation is based on a physical substratum, which holds equally for living systems and their behaviour. The article distinguishes between three system levels: the functional level, the interface to the environment and the cognitive level of. Using these three levels, the learning cycle or the previous Cognitive Loop can be very well illustrated. If one compares with this way of distinction the Bio-Informatization of human intelligence with the technical development stages of mechanization, automation, regulation and deep learning, then the cybernetic-sociological term “operational closure” becomes understandable. It becomes obvious that in the context of a digitized culture of production and organization, we should be prepared for a new kind of cognitive loop based on silicon (SI), an intelligent system behavior via ...