Industrie 4.0

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.

Die zukünftige Verstädterung führt zu einem Wachstum der urbanen Strukturen und gleichzeitig zu einer Konzentration von potenziellen Konsumenten von Gütern sowie von potenziellen Arbeitskräften der Fabriken von morgen. Dem Trend von Industrie 4.0 sowie einer Urbanisierung folgend sind daher auch die Fabriken mit ihren Arbeitsmodellen einem Wandel unterworfen. Mit dem Beginn der vierten industriellen Revolution spielt der Mensch als Produktionsfaktor weiterhin eine zentrale Rolle, allerdings ändert sich seine Rolle im Wertschöpfungsprozess. Dabei zeichnet sich immer stärker ein künftiger Mangel an qualifizierten Fachkräften ab. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht daher auf verschiedene arbeitsorganisatorische Ansätze zur Steigerung der Attraktivität urbaner Fabriken ein, welche zur Bewältigung des Fachkräftemangels einen Beitrag leisten sollen.

The integration of information technologies in the production environment proceeds and is summarized under the term ’Industry 4.0’. As a consequence, new challenges and opportunities transform the risk landscape of supply chains substantially. Acknowledging this, our article outlines the impact of Industry 4.0 and formulates first recommendations for practitioners especially in the field of supply chain risk management.

At present, the industry has to face various challenges due to the needs of customers for individualized products and the related increasing number of product variants. Furthermore, the increasing complexity of the value added process and the demographic change with the related increasing average age of the employees as well as the growing shortage of skilled professionals negatively influence the situation. This article deals with assistance systems as a potential tool to meet these new demands and demonstrates successful implementations of these systems that have been already realized.

In today’s production systems the functions of production planning and control (PPC) have a significant impact on an efficient performance of production processes. The decisive interface between the prognosis based planning and its operative realization can be seen in the exchange of plan data and production feedback data. It is to be expected that developments in the context of Industrie 4.0 lead to an increase in data quality and actuality. Based on these improvements improved production planning results can be achieved. In the present paper the main functions of production planning will be discussed in detail and their development potential with regard to Industrie 4.0 will be pointed out.