Aachen Information Management Conference: Industrie 4.0 – Quo vadis?

Aachen, January 9, 2017. Under the motto “Get ready for Connected Industries!”, The 7th Aachen Information Management Conference took place from 8 to 9 November. In more than 20 lectures, the 120 participants from the information and technology sector learned about the progressive networking in transport and industry. The latest developments from the areas of data collection, processing and analysis were presented at the accompanying trade fair.

How far is a company on their way to industry 4.0?

The focus of the event was the four-stage development process of a company with regard to its industry 4.0 capability. The maturity model, the Industrial 4.0 Maturity Index, developed under the umbrella of acatech (Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften) enables the four fields of action – resources, IT, organization and culture – to be illuminated and evaluated. The maturity model makes it possible to derive the necessary next steps towards company 4.0 individually and adequately.

Industry 4.0 has long been on everyone’s lips. With the technical prerequisites or the consequences in the day-to-day work process, only a few experts have dealt with so far and only a few users profit from the actual benefits.

“The advantage of Industry 4.0 through digital networking is demonstrated directly or indirectly by avoiding errors and cost drivers,” Professor Dr. Volker Stich, CEO of the FIR, points out: “With the currently low implementation of digital networking results, a substantial increase in value of around 20 – 30 per cent exists already today “.

The focus of the IM meeting was therefore on the potential and prerequisites of value added from data, which can be divided into the levels of visibility, transparency, predictability and adaptability.

Digital networking

Whether it’s warehouse management, logistics, or “smart production”, the focus is always on optimizing the entire supply chain. The application possibilities range from the passive registration of the goods in a warehouse to the tracking of a product and its route optimization up to the performance improvement in the high-performance sport. Hamburger Hafen und Logistik AG (HHLA) is meeting this challenge. With a binding exchange of information and concrete time windows in the truck handling area, as Jens Gutsch, Head of Terminal Development from HHLA, explained: The obligation to register and book a ticket in advance will ensure transparency and reliability in the handling of several ten thousand truck per week. The performance of the systems is increased through targeted resource management.

To further optimize these logistics processes, IBM is pushing forward the development of pattern recognition. In this context, Dr. Mark Mattingley-Scott, Lead Architecture for Big Data & Industry 4.0, outlined the transparency and disclosure of interrelationships, not only to recognize that something is happening, but also to infer why something is happening. In the event of a storm or a traffic jam, it is clear that an expected delivery must be processed late and later, so there must still be personnel and storage space.

In Best Practice lectures, authentic solutions were presented to the challenges of Industry 4.0 and demonstrated how they work in the field of work and which measures help to overcome the challenges.

The next Aachen Information Management Conference will take place from 15th to 16th November 2017 at the FIR on the RWTH Aachen Campus.