digitalisation

The digital interactions along the value chain pose new challenges for managing information and knowledge. The objectives of this article are to describe the changes in knowledge-based value creation induced by digitalisation and to derive fields of action for knowledge management for Industry 4.0. The “knowledge ladder 4.0” shows how digital technologies can transform strategic and operative knowledge management. Subsequently, we offer a framework for the knowledge-oriented design of dynamic digital organisations that consists of three layers of activities for the operation, reflection and design of knowledge management illustrated with leading questions and case examples in order to promote the productive, responsible and sustainable usage of digital technologies.

Social media and the digitalisation of products allow a direct view into product and service use and customer experience. This Product Usage Information may be used systematically in product and service development. However, this requires its interoperability with relevant processes and IT systems. This paper presents an approach and its implementation as an IT platform which fulfils these prerequisites.

Many companies struggle to determine their own status and strategy when it comes to digitalization and self-organizing production. The Industry 4.0 Maturity Index offers a guideline in this process and helps to ensure future competitiveness. Using the multidimensional maturity model, companies can evaluate their status-quo and develop a roadmap to accelerate their digital development. The case study of a manufacturer of electrical connectivity solutions demonstrates how to reduce costs and increase productivity with the help of the Industry 4.0 Maturity Index.

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 ...

In the context of Industry 4.0 the change and digitalisation of technical information move more closely in the focus of research. During the whole life cycle of a product, relevant information arises, that has to be stored appropriately. Future industrial applications require adaptive information management, e.g., individual and appropriate delivery of data, connection of information, target-oriented search or visualisation of information. The focus of this contribution is on challenges of the digitalization of technical documentations with respect to Industry 4.0 paradigms. The handling of the technical documentation over the complete lifecycle of a product is discussed.

Industry 4.0 not only changes products, processes and work organisation, but also the understanding of leadership. Manager in future are visionaries, analysts and mentors who develop the strategy and new business models, designer and moderators for virtual and intercultural teams, self-reflected personalities..

Industry 4.0 is one of the most frequently used term - in context to improved productivity, flexibility and securing the standard of living in Germany and Europe. In spite of the various initiatives that primarily focus on the formulation of the technical requirements, there is currently no common understanding in terms of content and implementation. With the goal to estimate the degree of implementation and define future potential projects, this article defines a comprehensive and pragmatic rating system. Based on industrial studies and individual professional experiences, various criteria are captured and used. There are already two use case demonstrations in real industrial applications.

In hardly any other sector have the production conditions changed so rapidly in recent years as they have in the automotive industry: An increasing variety of models, greater variety, greater segmentation and the increasingly international nature of automobile production require efficient supplier plants with greater production depth. Suppliers who want to compete therefore have to continuously and flexibly adapt their processes to the dynamics of the major manufacturers. At the forefront of this is the company IT: From this it is expected that more and more formerly analogous processes will be reproduced digitally. But digitization is only possible with great knowledge of the industry and individually tailored solutions.

In product creation, time reduction and increasing of innovation ability will be enabled by new innovations of methods and technologies for virtual engineering. The idea of virtual engineering is a holistic approach of a collaborative, virtual and integrated product creation. Therefore, individual, application-oriented configuration and an interoperable integrated IT-environment are required. Moreover, virtual engineering deals with adoption and optimisation of methods and tools for management of environments for product creation.