Open Access Articles

Additive manufacturing (AM) has become one of the biggest trends in modern, industrial ma-nufacturing. The diverse requirements of various industries have led to many different AM processes and process variants. By using AM, advantages such as function integration, lightweight construction or increased efficiency can be enabled. But most of the known AM processes are still facing technological and economic challenges. Especially in applications requiring high accuracy for small parts, production has often been uneconomic until now. Here, the new Lithography-based Metal Manufacturing technology offers new possibilities and opportunities.

The increasing complexity forces industrial companies to look for new strategies for a future-proof product development. One approach to this is agile approaches in product development in combination with additive manufacturing processes. Physical product increments can thus be produced during sprints and analyzed and improved directly with customers. This improves the product understanding of the development team and customers. The benefits are shorter development times, better customer orientation of the products and a lower project risk.

The age of globalisation is characterised by increased competition. An opportunity to succeed in the face of increasing competition lies in the digitisation of production companies. This article is dedicated to the design of a three-stage model platform of Industry 4.0, which focuses on the consistency of processes from the customer to the supplier at all company levels. The model platform is followed by an overview of the transformation steps for evaluating and shaping progress on the way to become a digitised production company.

The use of well-proven principles and methods of Lean Management in the IT departments of companies can be regarded as feasible and reasonable by now. But for the breadthways application there is a lack of a connection between Lean tools and the problems in modern IT departments. Within the scope of the analysis it can be shown that particular Lean methods can effectuate a positive outcome in precise fields of action, as well as certain IT subareas in whole can benefit from the use of established Lean methods.

The paper describes the conception and implementation as well as offers an insight into the first results of a study with experimental design in a simulated process environment at the Research and Application Center Industry 4.0 in Potsdam. The focus is on learning processes in the field of simple work and their organization through the use of digital assistance systems. In labour research, there are indications that process knowledge is lost with the use of these systems, in the sense of a good knowledge of the entire work process in which the individual activities are embedded. To investigate the role of process knowledge in the use of digital assistance systems, a real factory situation is simulated in the experiment.

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 ...

The paper presents a method for the systematic selection of “Digital Twin” applications of products. Based on a product-independent search of implementations, potential use cases for the product’s ”Digital Twin” are specified and selected. This selection of applications forms the basis of the method, which allows a detailed modeling in two phases. The result of this modeling is an in-depth understanding of the use cases themselves and their requirements, especially information requirements, on the “Digital Twin” of the product. Furthermore, these findings enable an efficient conception and implementation of the virtual image of the product and can be the basis for optimizing the existing value chain.

Collaborative robots (so-called cobots) that enable secure hand-in-hand collaboration with construction workers without physical separation are regarded as a promising future technology for manufacturing companies. In practice, there are some cases in which people interact with cobots, but very few in which collaboration in a narrower sense takes place. What are the reasons for this lack of collaborative applications? What role does the cobots’ ability to enable collaboration play in practice? The study is based on qualitative evidence gathered in four German small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The impact of digitization on the economy cannot be seen detached from the debate on sustainable development. Corporate Sustainability Management (CSM) offers particular potential for approaching sustainable development and Industry 4.0 from a company perspective. However, supporting digitized sustainability management in companies with information requires a consistent and seamless flow of information, which can be achieved with the help of methods of knowledge representation. Current challenges and approaches for the development of an open and conceptional CSM model are presented in this article.

Blockchain holds high potential for various applications. In the business context, one of its key features - the availability of data to various parties - is a liability as business secrets shouldn’t be exposed and GDPR compliance has to be ensured. In this paper, we discuss solutions for these privacy problems. Also, we present the HANSEBLOC project, a blockchain-powered platform for data exchange in logistics, and the chosen privacy solutions.