Internet of Production for Agile Companies
“Internet of Production for Agil Companies“ – this was the key topic of this year’s Aachen Machine Tool Colloquium AWK, which to place for the 29th time between May 18 and 19. As one of the highlights of the conference, the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering WZL and the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT presented the first series production vehicle manufactured with the help of Industrie 4.0 methods. Furthermore, the conference saw the inauguration of the largest production engineering research cluster in Europe on RWTH Aachen Campus and, as an affiliation, of the new RWTH Business School.
About 1,200 experts from production engineering and related disciplines attended the Aachen Machine Tool Colloquium, which featured, aside from a program of talks and presentations, an industrial fair and offered the opportunity of site visits of university research institutes.
In two parallel lecture series, the colloquium offered twelve expert presentations, four keynote lectures, and six additional plenary lectures from scientists and practitioners, providing a comprehensive overview of current Industrie 4.0 approaches and strategies.
Sessions on the key topics of agile product development; learning production systems; interconnected, adaptive production; and science in manufacturing practive gave answers to many of today’s most pressing questions in production engineering. As part of the colloquium, the attendees had the chance to visit the numerous newly established institutions on RWTH Aachen Campus.
Internet of Production - An Aachen Perspective
The Internet of Production captures the Aachen perspective on the challenges of Industrie 4.0. The first and foremost aim is to ensure the real-time availability of secure information at any time and at any place. Thus information becomes a powerful and highly versatile digital “shadow of production.” Precise, continuous data analysis makes it possible to detect patterns in production and generate forecasts to support decision-making processes.
Systematic learning from data gathered via the so-called Internet of Production offers vast potential for companies – it facilitates agile, highly iterative product development and the rapid and error-free implementation of change requests in series production. The competitive advantage gained through the collection of aggregated information in near real-time supports companies in achieving new forms of adaptation and agility.