Increasing Collaboration Productivity for Sustainable Production Systems

Due to the potentials of Industrie 4.0 such as cyber-physical systems, manufacturing companies will connect their intelligent products and machines. The resulting smart factory enables integrated engineering across the entire value chain. Furthermore, intelligent assistance systems will support employees so that they can focus on value adding activities. Within the Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries” of the RWTH Aachen University, which is funded by the German Research Foundation DFG, four mechanisms were developed regarding these current developments to increase collaboration productivity and therefore facilitate a sustainable production system. The mechanisms “radically short product development processes”, “virtual engineering of complete value chains”, “better performing than engineered” and “revolutionary short value chains” do not only improve manufacturing processes but also product development processes and thus meet current challenges as resource and energy efficiency.