Issue: System Integration

Products and services have had a complicated love story. Can decentralized data spaces give their relationship the room it needs to grow?

A growing number of variants, more complex components, increasingly individualized products and the resulting reduction in batch sizes are challenging manufacturing companies. In order to keep up, they must be able to adapt their production flexibly.

From the smallest start-up to entire nations – anyone who wants to survive in today’s fast-paced, globalized market structures needs a carefully thought-out, resilient strategy.

BMW and Fraunhofer IPK are regular collaborators – whether it is research on the use of cobots in assembly or on digital product twins to reduce emissions, holistic approaches for the production of tomorrow are developed through joint efforts. FUTUR interviewed Dr. Milan Nedeljković, Member of the Board of Management of BMW AG, Production, about his vision of what this future will look like and how we will get there.

ID card, passport or driver’s license – adults in Germany carry at least one of these documents with them every day. In his FUTUR guest article, Dr. Florian Heitmüller from Bundesdruckerei GmbH explains how they are produced.

From Gaia-X to Manufacturing-X – digital ecosystems aim to enable effective and secure data exchange between industry players. Ernst Stöckl-Pukall, head of the department »Digitalization, Industry 4.0« at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK), and Fraunhofer IPK experts Prof. Dr. Holger Kohl and Dr. Kai Lindow discuss the benefits for companies in a conversation with FUTUR.

System integration is key to help manufacturing companies remain competitive in high-wage countries and defend their market leadership – so how can it be achieved?

Technologically challenging, strategically essential: To orchestrate complex development and production processes, companies have to integrate various IT systems and their data.

If you want to innovate production in a more holistic and cooperative way, integrating models are the way to go.

Not unlike a professional soccer team, the different players in a production system must work together perfectly. That is why the Fraunhofer flagship project EMOTION researches empathetic technical systems.