Digitalisierung

China’s economic and demographic change forces the country to take action in its health care system. AI, Big Data and Robotics play a vital role in bringing the quality of health care to a new level and the country to the politically desired world leadership in key technologies. The abundance of data, limited privacy laws, vast amounts of venture capital and strategic partnerships between AI-industry and the government have fueled the fast AI-development in China to which Germany and Europe have yet to find an answer.

In the apparel industry, with demanding customers and an oversupply of products and shopping options, interactivity and individualization offer important opportunities for differentiation. However, digital business-to-consumer interactions have so far been limited to product configuration and viewing. This paper presents new, digitally supported approaches to integrate the customer into the collection development process of the apparel industry.

The introduction of digital technologies will provide completely new possibilities for the design and operation of supply chains in the future. A decisive step should be the decentralization of structures and processes inside firms which also shows effect on the cooperation between companies. It finally offers the opportunity to solve long-standing problems of supply chain management. When are companies ready to take this step? The technologies are.

German industrial companies are suffering from an increasing shortage of skilled workers. In order to secure Germany’s existing competitive advantages, suitable solutions have to be carried out to counter this shortage. Technologies in the context of “Industry 4.0” offer promising solutions. Using this technologies, significant productivity improvements as well as higher resource utilization rates can be achieved. However, the main challenge is to identify the right technical solutions for the specific business challenges. In the following, a systematic approach is presented to face these challenges.

The corona pandemic was an eye opener. Practically overnight, it has demonstrated how digitalization can transform almost every area of daily life. It has accelerated structural change towards a data economy. A data economy works according to its own rules. They differ fundamentally from the principles of a goods economy. Therefore, the new data economy requires a new data economics.

Due to an increased product variety, the need for flexibly configured assembly systems is steadily growing. In contrast to classic assembly lines with predominantly rigid conveyor technology, efficient, individual assembly routes with cycle-independent processing times are implemented in a dynamically interconnected assembly system using intelligent control and AGVs. This article presents the most important factors for the IT-related implementation of a dynamically interconnected assembly system and shows which existing standards from the field of Industry 4.0 can be used for this purpose.

Industry 4.0 is work in progress in Germany, digital technologies such as IoT, KI, Cloud or Big Data Analytics are increasingly being introduced in companies. However, alongside technology, people and organisation are the central success factors of digital transformation. Further training, lifelong learning, agile organisation and corporate culture are becoming increasingly important in companies. Study results on the competence requirements for industrial work 4.0 show that in addition to IT and technical skills, openness, overview knowledge, interdisciplinary cooperation and agility are also required. Young professionals from NRW largely understand the importance of these competences, but show significant deficits in many of them, especially in digital competences, interdisciplinary cooperation and agility. It is necessary to promote these competences in a targeted manner during studies and further education.

In many companies there is still a lack of clarity about the “right” way to implement digitalization projects. Therefore, the article describes guidelines for the successful implementation of digitalization projects. They are derived from the experience of various practical projects and include considerations of economic efficiency as well as resources and staff. Structured as “Ten Commandments for Digitalization Projects”, they are designed to support actors in the practical implementation of digitalization projects