The fourth industrial revolution stands for higher flexibility and productivity of companies. This requires intelligent and interconnected production systems with a well-trained staff. This article describes how the necessary qualification processes can be performed. A high degree of individualized products requires more digitized information (e.g. via IoT, sensors, RFIDs) and a flexible form of work. Today's changes in enterprises are focusing on upgrading the technical equipment. Dealing with changing the mental setting of the staff, enabling employees for digitalization and learning to cooperate in a smoother way (social learning) play an important role. Sensitization regarding necessary changes, decentralized decision-making and cooperating are the main goals for a training. Nevertheless, company's employees also need new technical skills to prepare the enterprise for higher levels of digitization. Learning factories include a stepwise evaluation and transformation of a model factory by the participants themselves. Performing group work sessions, participants have to agree on the future organizational structures, regardless of their function or role as worker, manager or administrative employee. In the upper level of production system design, a high level of digitization is the aim and most of the information flow should be automatically handled. In order to give participants a feeling for introducing extended IT support and using standard interfaces, they have to overcome some technological gaps. An example of a training factory is presented, which is focusing on the transformation of these production systems with different production steps.
The ongoing globalization and the changing demand of customers accompany the fourth industrial
revolution. Customer individual products and shorter product life cycles cause challenges. Germany‘s
Industry 4.0 offers a solution to handle these new challenges. Politically, economically and especially
technical drivers are forcing companies to build up on their implemented holistic production systems
and to do the next step towards smart manufacturing [
The goal regarding autonomous communication among components, production systems, transport
media and further production capabilities, as well as the integration of actors of the value chain
(including customers and suppliers) causes big challenges for companies (e.g. unclear economic benefit
[
An efficient way of qualification approach is the use of serious games [
The article is dived into four sections. It starts with the challenges of the fourth industrial revolution including of the challenges for employees. The second section deals with the qualification requirements of smart manufacturing, and the third part presents a use case of a training factory to overcome the challenges and to offer qualified training activities. Finally, limitations and further developments are discussed.
Customized products and short product life cycles along with strong competition are challenges for
enterprises acting locally and globally. In order to face these challenges higher flexibility and
productivity are needed to be competitive. Industry 4.0 – the fourth industrial revolution – creates the
framework to handle this challenge. Efficiency of energy consumption and other resources but also the
demographic change are the basic topics enterprises need to deal with [
Technology to realize the digitalization and the vertical and horizontal integration are supporter to face the three main challenges. This counts in particular also for the manufacturing industry [10]. The challenges point in the same direction: higher product variants and smaller volumes per product (see figure 1). Customer-oriented or personalized products increases process variations at the same time it decreases the advantage of identical procedures, thus more specific processes are necessary. The globalization cause the same effect and generate more complexity [11].
The increasing complexity leads to more complex information and production processes, including
machines, systems as well as supporting software. Several sets of data need to be rearranged, relocated,
formatted and/ or adjusted. Many of these tasks need a lot of manual work or at least preparation by
humans. Although a continuous and integrated end-to-end engineering exists, overlapping product life
cycles increase the complexity. The shorter becoming product life cycle and decreasing time of products
on the market does not decrease the request for ongoing innovations. Novel and innovative production
are still very important to stay competitive. Acting on volatile markets also requires interdisciplinary
and internationally networks to manage complex value chains. Every restructured and enlarged
crossborder business activity requires reorganization or changes of existing processes to adopt them to
different conditions [
The three challenges outlined above create the need to handle the increased and more complex information and material flows. Intelligent systems, which need to be developed and implemented to drive the transformation towards smart manufacturing, support the agent-based production control by using AI (artificial intelligence). The stocks of material and resources are automatically updated (mostly in real-time) and production orders are assigned to suitable machines according to the current situation. The production controller itself does not need to take any decision. The system requires an increasing connection between production and logistics, whereby assistance systems also control the internal and external material flow. This displays new requirements of operational procedures at the production control. Future tasks are related to interdisciplinary development of logics regarding interaction and processing rules. IT (information technology) experts as technical key persons are reference points of different employee groups in order to develop the supporting systems. Employees whose work involve the exchange with the IT experts need different skills in order to match the changing job profile [14, 15].
Based on the idea to have more flexibility, a higher productivity and a faster reaction time regarding market changes and customer demands, the information flow plays an important role. It requires suitable systems to ensure an effective stream of information but also specific qualification of the employees are needed. Employees on all levels (e.g. assembly worker, line manager but also middle and high management) need skills in order to provide the right information at the right time for orderindividually processes. Specific information need to be connected, e.g. tracking of orders and locating errors through the complete value-creation process requires a continuous integrated end-to-end process from the product configuration via the shop floor to the final outgoing of goods. Decision-supporting systems on shop floor level, AI assistant support or BI (business intelligence) build up on the fed data but even more how data sources are connected. The integration of PDM (product data management), PLM (product lifecycle management) and ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems support the process but at the end, it requires the setting and configuration of humans in order to let the systems work efficiently. The competency of the employees regarding processes, intercommunication and interoperability are essential [14, 16].
One step before, in order to introduce new systems a knowledge base is necessary, at least an overview regarding IT support systems and AI solutions. This builds the framework to evaluate and get use of the potential of the system, to find and record requirements, to identify options, and finally to configure the value added components and do the first steps regarding an effective implementation [14, 16].
From a methodically view, knowledge regarding information model and process thinking, and some elementally skills regarding modeling are needed. For interdisciplinary connection along the supplyand value creation chain, skills regarding openness and communication, and a broad understanding of existing enterprise division are necessary.
Last but not least, the overall sensibility regarding new technologies is one of the most important topics in order to finish a successful implementation using different methods, systems and physical elements, and become a smart enterprise [14, 16]. Table 1 summarizes comprehensive qualification requirements.
There are also employee group-specific requirements regarding the technical/ functional, methodical and social qualifications. The enterprise areas of a manufacturing enterprise are used to display an example of specific qualification requirements (see Table 2).
A learning session at a learning factory needs to select the content from the three central sections (technical/ functional, methodical and social). In order to provide an effective training it is useful to select focus topics to form modules and to combine them step-by-step [17]. The methodic mix of theoretical input, practical examples (learning by watching) and practical exercises (learning by doing) in combination with social interaction in small groups is effective and promises success (see Figure 2). The group work sessions with small group of participants (four to six persons) have different topics. The groups rotate so that every participant takes part in every exercise session. The group work results are verified by real application cases. The flexible training allows to offer additional theoretical sessions in order clarify open questions with theory input.
This typical approach for learning factories generates motivation and allows that participants learning through play, based on the positive atmosphere. The use case of Fraunhofer IPK’s learning factory follows a transformation process (see Figure 3). Focus is mainly on understanding and identifying requirements and effects of technical supporting equipment, and fostering the interdisciplinary teamwork.
Fraunhofer IPK implements a learning factory that is based on three assembly lines to produce a product in different variants. The assembly lines have different technology levels. The first one presents a case with a very low level of digitalization and low degree of automation; most of the work is done manually. The participants are working in teams to develop solutions to bring the assembly line to an advanced production level [18]. The developed solutions are partly implemented and evaluated. The third example presents an almost full-digitalized and full-automated application. On the way to the bestpractice example, all essential sections of the transformation process are addressed [14]: Technical/ functional: e.g. implementation of RFID (radio-frequency identification) technology in order to record incoming material/ resources and outgoing goods; implementation of advanced robot technology to increase the degree of automation Methodical: e.g. implementation of CIP (continuous improvement process) method as an element of an integrated production system; implementation of process-oriented analytics Social: e.g. sensitization and support of willingness and openness to perform changes; introduction and use of interdisciplinary communication and collaboration
The advanced approach of the learning factory fulfills the industrial demand of employees’ qualification in order to push the transformation process. Most enterprises have experienced that the transformation process towards smart manufacturing is long and consumes numerous resources. The awareness of learning factories is still not a fixed element on the path to become a smart enterprise. Some enterprise fall back into their old routine and try to drive the transformation process with a toolorientated investment policy instead of paying attention to methodical and social qualification elements.
All levels of employees need to be involved to perform a successful transformation process in a company (i.a. assembly worker, line manager, middle and high management). The demonstrated use case from Fraunhofer IPK focuses mainly on the manufacturing process at the shop floor. A future extension of the training factory towards administrative tasks and SCM is planned to ensure the quality and to increase the acceptance. This will be an additional value because the entire enterprise environment displayed in the learning factory: qualification on all levels and for most sections that are important for the transformation is provided.
Promotorengruppe Kommunikation der Forschungsunion Wirtschaft – Wissenschaft, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2013. [10] J. M. Rieckmann, H. Wan, F. Meng, The dynamics of internationalization of the manufacturing industry in China: A case study how networks affect SMEs' global strategies, in: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Industrial Economics System and Industrial Security Engineering, IEIS, IEEE, Kyoto, Japan, 2017. doi: 10.1109/IEIS.2017.8078620. [11] F. Jovane, Y. Koren, C. Boër, Present and future of flexible automation: Towards new paradigms,
CIRP Annals 52 (2003): 543-560. doi: 10.1016/S0007-8506(07)60203-0. [12] T. Bauernhansl, M. ten Hompel, B. Vogel-Heuser (Eds.): Industrie 4.0 in Produktion, Automatisierung und Logistik: Anwendung – Technologien – Migration, Springer, Wiesbaden, Germany, 2014. [13] J. M. Rieckmann, P. Gao, F. Meng, The role of social capital during SMEs' internationalization: build, maintain and use of networks, in: Proceedings of the International Conference on E-Business and Applications, ICEBA2018,, ACM, Da Nang, Vietnam, 2018. doi: 10.1145/3194188.3194200. [14] H. Kohl, T. Knothe, B. Schallock, J.-A. Scholz, Keine Angst vor Industrie 4.0!: Vier Maßnahmen zur Vorbereitung von Unternehmen auf die neuen Anforderungen menschlicher Arbeit in der Industrie 4.0, Industrie 4.0 Management 19 (2019) 37–41. [15] K. Mertins, M. Rabe, B. Schallock, Innovative production control based on decentralized intelligence, in: Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Production Management Systems, APMS, Cernobbio, Italy, 2010. [16] T. Weiland, Arbeitsorganisation und Qualifikation in der Industrie 4.0, Master’s thesis, Universität
Bremen, Bremen, Germany, 2013. [17] E. Abele, J. Metternich, M. Tisch, G. Chryssolouris, W. Sihn, H. El Maraghy, V. Hummel, F.
Ranz, Learning Factories for research, education and training, in: Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Learning Factories, CLF2015, Procedia CIRP 32, Bochum, Germany, Procedia CIRP 32 (2015): 1-6. doi: 10.1016/j.procir.2015.02.187. [18] E. Gelec, M. Kern, B. Schneider, A. Ullrich, G. Vladova, N. Gronau, R. von Lipinski, D. Buße, N.
Oertwig, Metamorphose zur intelligenten und vernetzten Fabrik, in: N. Weinert, M. Plank, A. Ullrich (Eds.), Metamorphose zur intelligenten und vernetzten Fabrik: Ergebnisse des Verbundforschungsprojekts MetamoFAB, Berlin, Germany, 2017. doi: 10.1007/978-3-66254317-7_3.