Industrie 4.0

Current developments of Industry 4.0 offer new possibilities for coordination and coope-ration in production networks. Information technology allows for an ad-hoc documentation and analysis of system states. Hence, manufacturing resources can be offered to other companies in the short term, and coordination, scheduling, and billing can be done quickly. Industry and science now need to find appropriate procedures and practices how to implement and run networks of shared resources.

Mixed global economic signs hardly allow for reliable long-term forecasts. While the traditionally export-oriented production sector in Germany is benefitting from the economic recovery in the U.S., Asian demand has started to dwindle. At the same time the third industrial revolution offers new opportunities and challenges through the development of intelligent production systems and manufacturing processes. In order to obtain an advantageous position in a changing technological and economic environment, companies must preserve efficiency and innovation in production processes. The deployment of modern technology and machinery equipment is therefore crucial. Flexible financing solutions help industrial enterprises make investments and maintain flexibility and competitive advantage.

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.

Highly valuable goods are usually customized to the specific needs of the customer. It is therefore essential to integrate the customer in the important decisions during the engineering phase. This article introduces a Augmented Reality solution to design and plan variants on-site together with the customer. This solution was tested on a real example, a retrofit of an emission reducing technology on a ship.

Demanding challenges arise through interactions of demographic development and change of modern working life in an industry 4.0., especially for enterprises of the production and logistics sector. While facing rapidly changing technologies and demographic homogenous personnel, they are requested to ensure that the required knowledge and the necessary competences are constantly recallable. A demographic-sensitive, operational competence management (ABEKO) plays a major role.

The term Industry 4.0 has changed from a fashionable issue to a serious research and future-topic in industrial production. Research organisations work on sophisticated technologies and concepts to implement this fourth industrial revolution, research grants are provided generously and model factories get decorated. However, many companies still cannot understand the term industry 4.0 and the related consequences on their own business. Especially small and medium sized enterprises have not understood the benefits. For that reason the currently existing learning factory at the institute of industrial management and innovation research at Graz University of Technology is enlarged to an industry 4.0 learning factory. The concept behind is the object of this article.

The contribution describes seven effects of cyber-physical systems (CPS) on production systems. These effects encompass the influence of CPS on adaptability, the intensified usage of more available factory data and the de-hierarcization of planning and control. Additionally a research approach is presented for investigating the effects of CPS on production systems using a controlled laboratory environment. The contribution ends with a description of further research questions.

The increased application of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) in production and manufacturing sector increases the demand on functional safety and reliability. Maintenance is responsible to ensure the availability of resources. In this context the question is, which Labour Organization and maintenance philosophy can be achieved in economic terms. It is important to know what type of four typical organization variants are to be preferred in short, medium and long term. The relative comparison is carried out taking into account different organization forms to the achievement of objectives. The selected set of objectives is taken into account for CPS typical effectiveness and efficiency dimensions.

Volatile and globalizing markets as well as their linkage require dynamic, flexible processes and resources. Thus, many companies have implemented a Lean Production System (LPS), but the gradient for companies that have implemented LPD years ago is going to be lower. Thus, companies need to seek new ways to dynamize and enhence their production system. The fourth industrial revolution might be the answer to handle these challenges. Information and communication technologies, coming along with the fourth industrial revolution, are supporting the operational execution of LPS. This is exemplified with the principle of standardization.

Research and industry have agreed on the aims of Industry 4.0. Contrary to what this suggests, a variety of issues and related challenges, e.g. complexity, big data, security, etc., will not make a revolution at the push of a button easy. Humans in particular will also play a crucial role on the way to adaptive, networked and resource efficient factories and directly influence the factory of the future. The Fraunhofer IFF Magdeburg is therefore pursuing research on collaborative robots that will assist humans.