Making Manufacturing Flexible

For the 2022/23 edition »Research and Development Trends«, we asked managers of well-known manufacturing companies what challenges and requirements they expect to be faced with in the coming years. The result was clear: Technologies for five topics dominated the discussions across all industries. Our scientists are tackling these areas in application-oriented research projects. 

Volatility shapes today’s manufacturing industry. In early 2020, climate change was considered the biggest challenge for production. Since then, various international crises have disrupted established production structures. Location conditions and supply chains have changed radically. The shortage of skilled workers and international competition are also increasing pressure on companies to rethink their methods, processes and technologies. Resource efficiency, regulatory requirements and demographic change demand flexible, sustainable approaches that promote corporate resilience.

Consequently, our research focuses on five overarching topics that concern companies across all industries:

• Data management, networking and analysis
• Manufacturing systems and production control
• Intelligent mechatronic systems technology
• Knowledge and assistance in production
• Sustainability and environmental compatibility

The challenge of collecting data, storing it appropriately, transferring it securely and evaluating it intelligently is the starting point for many development activities in industry. The great attention that data is currently receiving is not an end in itself. The idea behind it is that data-driven solutions make processes more efficient and enable new business models. 

The right basic methods make solutions for all process levels conceivable. At the level of overarching process control, production systems can achieve reliable throughputs without takt and assembly lines. To make sure that each machine can play its part in such a scenario, the individual systems must be equipped with a certain amount of intelligence. Assistance systems can in turn be based on this and support machine operators in setting up processes as well as during maintenance work. However, data-based solutions can also contribute in other ways to preparing manufacturing employees for changing tasks. And data holds great potentialwhen it comes to implementing sustainability and environmental compatibility as well. Interactions between these areas make it necessary to holistically approach concepts for production. 

This is precisely where we see our role. With integrated solutions and technologies, we help to increase our customers’ and partners’ competitiveness and ability to handle crises. In this issue, we present our approaches and results.