industry

Industry and export are the engine of the German economy. Not least the financial crisis and the impact on the real economy showed that the general conditions of the industrial enterprises change increasingly faster and radically. Changes which have been observed for longer times are enforced by the aftermath of the financial crisis. Two category groups can be identified as main challenges for the German industry: encrusted structures and socio-technical change. In companies the classical management methods are widely spread whose effectivity relies on the entire knowledge of causal connections and influence factors. But against the background of the actual challenges this not the status quo. This article explains how the comparison with nature offers explanations and approaches for the described problem.

20 years have gone by since the first complex Revenue Management System DINAMO (Dynamic Allocation and Maintenance Optimizer) has been applied for an integrated price and capacity control. From then on Revenue Management has established itself as a planning- or rather as a decision-instrument for acceptance/rejection problems mainly within the service industry. Airlines, car rentals and hotels particularly use this instrument. Until today only a few authors have discussed the possibility to assign Revenue Management also to the industry [1 - 4].

Using case studies, this article describes the business impact that Ubiquitous Computing could have on future organisations. Not only human beings but also products want to communicate a specific image. The article shows how this will affect future business processes. The product becomes the agent of the producer and communicates with its environment in order to comply with the performance objectives given by the producer. By using Ubiquitous Computing, possible future product functions will outperform the current industrial communication design by far.