Big Data

The circular economy (CE) promises a more sustainable use of resources by managing products in a cycle and striving for a transformation from a linear to a circular supply chain. In particular, digital technologies as enablers for the circular economy have been increasingly researched and applied in practice in recent years. This article describes which digital technologies offer potential for increasing circularity in the production of circular photovoltaic (PV) systems.

The underlying article measures the search intensity of employers and job seekers as well as the placement intensity of employment agencies. For this purpose, we use daily data of online activities on the job exchange platform of the German Federal Employment Agency and its internal placement software. The investigation focuses on search and placement during the Corona crisis 2020. According to the results, the search and placement activities were severely reduced in the first lockdown. The following recovery was rather sluggish. The most critical effects of the Corona crisis on the labour market may be due to a lack of new hires.

With the advent of People Analytics Big Data are made operative on the level of personnel management. An algorithm-based screening and analysis of all kinds of employee-related data and behavioral traces is expected to guarantee evidence-based decisions in an organizational field once considered ‘soft’ and subjective. The article summarizes the objectives and challenges of such data-driven personnel management, as well as its implications for employees and corporate labour policies.

In Germany, Big-Data is frequently associated with Industry 4.0. With regard to China, some publications focused upon the legal and ethical issues of the so-called social credit system, but offered little overview concerning the general aspects of Big-Data. This paper aims to deliver a more comprehensive outline of the Big-Data developments, which have been observed for the last seven years in China. In particular, the contribution delineates the application scenarios and governmental politics related to Big-Data and further deepens the insights by providing two concise case studies, one on mechanical engineering manufacturers and the other on Big-Data activities in the province of Guizhou. At the economic level, this article compares the recent Big-Data revenues in Germany and China.

A core element of Industry 4.0 and IoT is the ability to collect extremely high volumes of data in real time. [1] In order to achieve a benefit for business process optimizations, it is necessary to generate knowledge from this data. For this, conditions must be created with regard to infrastructure and organization. This article describes how to use a knowledge discovery process model in production logistics in combination with the Acatech-I-4.0 reference model to derive a procedure that uses data analytics to systematically exploit the benefits of I-4.0 in business processes.

Managers across the globe discuss the impact of digitalization on their business models. Among many other functions, procurement is strongly impacted by this development. However, “Procurement 4.0” goes far beyond the increased use of IT systems. It also has an impact on strategic dimensions such as supplier relationships. Data in this context will have a more important, if not critical, role- whether as some sort of “currency” in negotiations or as the basis for many procurement decisions, from operative order processing to supplier selection.

The ever increasing volatility in market conditions push the requirements of industrial companies for operational intelligence far beyond the capabilities of common business intelligence solutions. An integrated and comprehensive software solution was missing. Enterprise Operational Intelligence (EOI) closes the gap. EOI focuses Big Data on company strategies and (strategy-)compliant value chains. This incorporates a structured approach for all data to deliver value, including manufacturing-related data, Internet of Things and real-time processing, somewhat analogous to computer tomography. EOI allows leaders and managers to continuously adjust business processes to keep them in line with business strategies. Operations can be adjusted to new realities rapidly and the consequences of interventions can be understood quickly and comprehensively.

Success factors that had long driven China’s economic boom have lost their legitimacy gradually. The emergence of the competitive indigenous technology houses in IT, telecommunications and software industries in the past two decades has made China’s industrial digitalisation feasible, which the nation would urgently need to base its further growth more on technology and innovation. Consequently, China’s economic performance would become more solid and sustainable. Internet+ predicts the general direction of digitalisation in China’s industries and represents the concept that is currently enthusiastically debated by the economists, politicians and in the media. The integration of information technology with other manufacturing industries is particularly emphasised in this context. The article examines the background and the terminology, takes a look at the market model and some technical issues of Internet+. A case study accompanies the “excursion” to China, in order to give ...