Potenzial: Training

Digitalization opens up new forms of operational training. A growing focus is on smart services, which allow for proactive engagement with customer demands and empower businesses in times of digitalization. While traditional learning environments are rarely tailored toward individual needs, smart services offer new opportunities. Decentralization, previously only a utopic vision, is becoming the reality now.

Graduates in logistics management find themselves in working environments characterised by developments in digitalisation, automation and decentralisation. These trends are often summarised as “Logistics 4.0” when they take place in the field of logistics. In order to prepare students for these trends before they leave their university, laboratories equipped with the appropriate technologies could be used. This article describes how such a laboratory could be set up and what components it could consist of.

Today’s in-house training faces the challenge an increasing demand for work expertise against the background of a continuing reduction of staff. This paper describes how companies can meet these challenges supported by a technology-enhanced approach. A central part of the solution is an intelligent-adaptive learning system that allows employees to create learning media while solving operational challenges and, at a later time to access these media, adapted to their individual needs. The article outlines the main human, technical and organizational requirements that an integration of such an adaptive digital learning and assistance system into a company faces.

Companies have to cope with an individualization of products. Consequently, they are confronted with an increasing cost pressure and thus, they require optimal manufacturing processes. A possible approach is to share manufacturing resources with other companies to maximize the utilization of these resources. This paper describes possible perspectives of resource sharing for companies by using an analogy between the Web 2.0-based Share Economy and resource sharing of tomorrow’s production based on Industry 4.0.

A closer look at the population pyramid shows the ongoing demographic change. The number of employees that are due to retire on account of their advanced age will increase significantly in the next years. Without further actions the knowledge and practical expertise of these experienced employees will no longer be available in the company. The preservation of the practical knowledge by the integration of digital media in an industrial production environment is subject of the article and is verified by the learning factory of the chair of production systems.

At present, the industry has to face various challenges due to the needs of customers for individualized products and the related increasing number of product variants. Furthermore, the increasing complexity of the value added process and the demographic change with the related increasing average age of the employees as well as the growing shortage of skilled professionals negatively influence the situation. This article deals with assistance systems as a potential tool to meet these new demands and demonstrates successful implementations of these systems that have been already realized.

Aging employees in modern working environments require compensation of their decreasing fitness and cognitive abilities. Ambient Assisted Working (AAW) based on modern information technology can offer potentials to cope with the upcoming demographic change. The project EUNA aims at figuring out the potential contribution of wearable computing components to enable social and economic participation of aging employees. Focus of the project is on production oriented branches and logistics oriented service providers. The project activities include an empirical investigation of AAW to establish the status quo and future development of the topic within production and logistics as well as identifying new application areas.

tensive thought about the organization and optimization of workplaces. The level of automation in these domains provides a response of these trends. Assisting systems and their use in innovative human-robot interaction are playing a major role. Pressure-sensitive sensor systems using so-called tactile sensors like those described in this article are one example of current trends in future research.

Increasingly complex and technology-driven markets require a broad knowledge and qualifications of professionals in manufacturing companies. The range of needs for long-term competitive knowledge adaptation is versatile. Especially in view of the forecasted lack of qualified young people, it is more important to sustainably educate existing staff. Thus it is necessary to create sustainable and innovative learning environments which provide the necessary knowledge, qualifications and skills. An adequate and consistent concept represents the advanced Learning Factory (aLF) and is discussed in this paper.

According to current social and economic trends, businesses underlie considerable organizational challenges which imply a long term strategy development in order to maintain productivity and competitiveness. Development processes such as the globalization and internationalization, the demographic change, the increasing importance of knowledge, the technological change as well as the trend of individualization and flexibilization are significant. Businesses are challenged with its implications on the labour conditions and therefore on their productivity, quality and innovativeness. This article discusses the concept of Workplace Health Promotion as an efficient tool to support companies at mastering these essential challenges.