Integration

Integrating suppliers into global corporate value chains is of strategic importance for global manufacturing companies. For successful and efficient operations in these global networks, customers pose specific requirements towards the logistics operations of supplier to realize high delivery quality. Potential suppliers must fulfil these requirements in order to enter into a strategic partnership and long-term cooperation. The aim of this study is the compilation of these requirements suppliers from developing countries, as is India, in supply chains of German manufacturers.

A German study from the ifaa-trendbarometer shows that approximately 80 % of the interviewed experts assign the “Continuous Improvement Process” (CIP) a high or very high priority for the success in the “shop floor” [1]. The sustainable implementation of the CIP into an existing production system and the continuous use of CIP in daily business are associated with multifarious problems. This presents a major challenge for many companies in their operational production management. The following case study introduces a planning model, which considers the usual practical problems and helps for an appropriate approach in three phases to the CIP.

Companies, industrial and information technology service providers as well as the FIR at the RWTH Aachen are cooperating to implement the so called enterprise integration center (EICe), the infrastructure for the future project “industry 4.0” of the German government. There are three innovation labs and a demonstration factory ready for use, so research at a productive factory with actual production data becomes reality. With this infrastructure the EICe will approach the future of industrial research.

Incentives for self control in enterprises can only be successful when integrated by coordination. For this, harmonious concepts and “new” mechanisms of cooperation have to be developed. That topic is discussed in this article.

Analysis systems for petrochemistry and gas analysis, process control and surveillance of environment as well as in biotechnology and medicine systems are promising fields of application for micro and nano technologies. Such micro analysis systems combine low cost of investment, installation and use with precise and fast measurements at low consumption of probe and energy. For a successful introduction of such systems, however, these technologies have to be incorporated throughout the complete system, otherwise the advantages of high integration density, low cost of fabrication at high functionality will not be obtained. Various such micro analysis systems are presented e.g. a gas chromatograph, a mass spectrometer and an infrared measurement system.

Due to increasing pressure of competition accompanied with the developments in information technology many companies consider speeding up and improving their business processes with regard to major orientation towards their customers. Employees which are involved in these business processes have to be supported by an improved and tailored information supply. One possibility for this support by new Information Compative Technologies (ITC) will be shown in this article on the basis of an example for a customer complaint process.

Shorter times to market determine the competitiveness of companies in all industries. The necessary approaches to improvement of industrial processes have to focus on the optimisation of the entire product lifecycle. The resulting management and organisational approach is called PLM. The preliminary integration of all data along the lifecycle can only be handled by semantic technologies. In addition, the introduced approach brings sufficient intelligence to capture enterprise knowledge and effective task support for employees.