Digitalisierung

The networking between companies in a supply chain becomes tighter. This applies for manufacturing plants and the supply with manufacturing equipment as well. Hence, the complexity of the flow of information, in particular for tool management, increases. Currently the exchange of information is mostly paper-based and tool data is not available continuously along the supply chain. By using a digital and cloud-based tool management system, breaks in the flow of information along the supply chain for machining tools can be overcome. Herewith tool data can be called and updated ongoing and location-independent. Furthermore, after clearly identifying a tool, required tool data can automatically be transferred into the control system of the machine.

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.