Adaptable companies that can react agilely to disruptions in value networks and their production systems are a key to a crisis-proof economy. In the future, Saxon companies must be enabled to recognize risky changes in time and to evaluate them. Their production systems must be able to respond to these changes in a flexible and agile manner. 

To achieve the adaptable capability of a production system, five change enablers (universality, mobility, scalability, modularity and compatibility) are proposed in the literature. It is necessary to investigate these enablers with respect to their operationalizability for production systems of Saxon SMEs and to derive suitable methods for the implementation of adabtability. The REACT research group "WaPro - Wandlungsfähige Produktionsumgebungen" pursues a holistic research approach, which combines the adaptability to achieve from the perspectives of people, technology and organization. To this end, the impact of digital change on socio-technical production systems in manufacturing SMEs is being researched. In doing so, the research group qualifies future specialists for Saxon science and industry to research and design transformational production environments as socio-technical systems that contribute to the preparation of a green, digital and stable recovery of the economy. 

The aim
WaPro aims to qualify young scientists to develop concepts for the restoration and further development of a stable, digital and green Saxon economy. Through the research group, new concepts for the realization of transformable production systems for discrete manufacturing are explored in an interdisciplinary approach. The project results will strengthen the innovative power of the Free State of Saxony in the field of transformable SMEs. To this end, the research group links the disciplines of computer science, business informatics, industrial engineering, business administration, media informatics and labor sciences.

Derived from the core goals of "stable, green and digital", the young scientists are investigating the transformation enablers of universality, mobility, scalability, modularity and compatibility with regard to their suitability for operational implementation of the goals at the four levels of inter-company collaboration (networked value creation), factory planning, machine/plant and human-technology interface. A major focus is on the operationalizability of the enablers for manufacturing SMEs in Saxony.

On the content, methodological side, the goal is to generate synergies through cross-disciplinary collaboration between the individual sub-disciplines and to sensitize and motivate the young scientists for cross-disciplinary and cross-methodological collaboration and for the creation of innovative solutions for transformation-capable production systems.

Tools for the engineering of digitization solutions

The Arrowhead Tools project targets digitization and automation solutions for European industry. The technological gaps that hinder IT/OT integration are to be closed by introducing new technologies in an open source platform for design and runtime engineering of IoT systems. The sub-project of HTW Dresden includes the realization of use cases for interoperability between secure SMART industrial applications. Task areas in terms of content include production support, energy efficiency, task management, data analytics and  smart maintenance/ servicing.

The project "Capabilities-bAsed and Self-Organizing Manufacturing Management" (CASO) aims to develop a software framework that supports the production planning and control of such a smart factory by means of combined centralized and decentralized planning and enables the secure connection of production capacities of contract manufacturers. The project investigates the combination of self-organization and central production planning in a smart factory, the possibility of describing machines by means of semantic models, the dynamic generation of plant recipes based on this, and the digital safeguarding of recipe data to protect against product counterfeiting and the protection of intellectual property in the case of third-party production. The project is being carried out in cooperation with the practical partners: adidas AG, TecWare Gesellschaft für Softwareentwicklung mbH, DUALIS GmbH IT Solution, Tobias Prometall GmbH & Co. KG and Carl Zeiss Innovationszentrum für Messtechnik GmbH.

SmaRTHI stands for Smart Robotics for time-flexible, immersive and location-independent teamwork in craft and industry and is a joint project of TU Chemnitz, TU Dresden, HTW Dresden and Fraunhofer IWU gewesen within the framework of the Future Cluster Initiative (Clusters4Future) of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The goal: humans and robots working more closely together to increase the competitiveness of craft and industry. The vision of the SmaRTHI future cluster is for humans and robots to work together in the future as optimally complementary time-flexible and location-independent teams. In this way, better working conditions can be created, people can be protected in their manual activities, participation in the labor market can be democratized, and the shortage of skilled workers in the skilled trades can also be countered with the new technologies. At the same time, factories and businesses will become more efficient, flexible and resilient. As a result, the overall prosperity of society can be increased. SmaRTHI is building an ecosystem in which novel technologies are researched, developed and industrialized. Digitization as a connecting element is increasingly helped to have a value-creating effect in physical processes.

Current information on the research alliance can be found here on the web: https://www.smarthi.de/

Intelligent automation of the tire mounting process

Motivation and objective

The aim of the project is to ensure continuously high quality, increase quantity and thus increase customer satisfaction through smart automation of the tire assembly process. To this end, the project is developing functional models and demonstrators that enable automation of the assembly process using equipment already used in assembly today. These systems will be extended by sensors and actuators in the sense of a retrofit approach. With such a system, the physically heavy work is shifted from the employees to the automatic assembly machine and very high, consistent quality as well as higher throughput is possible.

Subproject: Software systems and test environment for the RFID sensor tag platform.

In RISE4PM new methods for the use of wireless RFID sensor systems for the realization of Industrie 4.0 use cases are investigated. For this purpose, new approaches in the form of cyber-physical systems for production will be researched and developed. The result will be a holistic framework of a cyber-physical production system (CPPS) consisting of hardware and software components, which will enable industrial users to efficiently realize typical measurement tasks for Industrie 4.0 use cases following a plug-and-work approach using RFID technologies.
 

Project Transfer Center Functional Integration for Micro/Nanoelectronics - Subproject SimiKom - System integration of miniaturized components for structure-integrated wireless sensor technology in mechanical engineering.

In cooperation with Fraunhofer IPMS, HTW Dresden is developing a wireless data logger with an RFID sensor interface using the technologies developed in SimiKom, which can be seamlessly integrated into the material flow in a manufacturing system (e.g. by attaching it to the component or as a separate "job" in the system). For this purpose, the project develops and tests new software architectures for the efficient acquisition and processing of sensor data. Another focus of the work is the development of a management shell for the data logger and the overall system for seamless integration into operational information systems and industrial control systems.

Modern teaching requires access to learning resources and content independent of time and place. Currently, these learning environments are primarily limited to digital content and formats. The "Ubiquitous learning environment for cyber physical systems" (ULE4CPS) project has enabled new forms of interaction in teaching and learning on cyber-physical systems (CPS). CPS are systems in which information and software technology are connected with electronic and mechanical components. While working with digital twins and virtual commissioning is becoming increasingly important in practice, little work exists that transfers these concepts for application in higher education. The project aims to provide, in addition to face-to-face teaching for learners, access to complex technical systems at any time and any place. The goal was to create a learning and experimentation environment that enabled mental and physical immersion in complex information technology and physical systems, independent of time and place.

The ULE4CPS project was funded as part of the Stifterverbandes, anniversary initiative "Wirkung hoch 100" (Impact to the power of 100), as one of the 100 most outstanding ideas for better education, science and innovation. 

To individually determine the digital status of a company (digital maturity level), the self-assessment tool of the same name was developed as part of the self-assessment tool of the same name. This tool offers In addition to the assessment of the digital maturity level, it also offers suitable, target-oriented recommendations for action, which are illustrated by designed demonstrators and explanations. This to make it easier for companies to get started with digitization. More information on DigiLotsen and access to the tool can be found here.

Motivation

Modern production plants are nowadays unimaginable without robots. High reliability, low downtime and working in hazardous areas make robots the guarantee for fast production in high volumes. Robots are said to be destroying jobs. However, practice shows that this is not the case. On the contrary, they create jobs. The current trend is that production processes are becoming much more individualized in the course of the digitalization of the industry. Robots have not been able to cope with these frequent changes yet, so they have to be constantly reprogrammed. The resulting implementation process is very complex, expensive and lengthy. Current market figures show that approximately 56% of the costs of automating a previously manual activity are incurred by implementing the necessary software. The costs for automation can rise to a level where it is no longer worthwhile.

Above all, the adaptability of people and their ability to solve problems creatively are indispensable for today's production facilities. Robots should rather be used to facilitate the work of humans. This allows them to do the part of the work that is particularly difficult, dangerous or monotonous. To achieve this, robots must be enabled to collaborate with humans quickly and adaptively. So-called Cobots are capable of exactly that. The advantage of collaboration is that transfers between manual and automated production steps can be carried out directly and, under certain circumstances, collaborative manipulations are also possible. The field of human/robot collaboration is currently still largely ignored. The implementation and establishment of this key technology would keep local companies competitive on the international market and secure jobs in the long term.

Objective

Within the project a demonstrator shall be developed and integrated into Industrial IoT Test Bed, which enables the cooperation between a Cobot and a human at a manual workstation. In order to counteract the high cost and time factor in robot programming the solution of consortium leader Wandelbots GmbH is used. That enables non-programmers to train industrial robots with the help of intelligent clothing and gesture recognition without having to write program code. Therefore the technical integration of the sensor clothing, the Cobot control and the RTLS with a production control system is to be developed and tested. The result is a demonstrator which, in the interaction of sensor information from the clothing, information from the RTLS and the respective order information from the production control system, enables optimum support by the Cobot at a manual workstation, individually adapted to the respective worker. Due to the integration into the Smart Systems Hub Dresden, the demonstrator can be further used in many ways. As a priority, it can serve as a blueprint for other local companies and demonstrate how collaborative robotics applications can be designed, planned and cost-effectively implemented in production plants.

Due to the rapid spread in everyday life and the great acceptance among users, digital assistants are becoming an omnipresent part of our lives. The success of the intelligent assistants is attributed to the intuitive user interface. Language should be regarded as the most natural form of communication between man and machine. The voice interface allows a casual and easy use of devices even for inexperienced and less tech-savy users. Owing to the complexity of natural language, speech-based assistance systems for control and communication in manufacturing have not been used so far. The objective of the Debuti project is to research the current status of voice-controlles assistance systems in manufacturing, to desing and implement a demonstrator for the control of a robot bysuch an assistant, and to prepare a research project for the use of digital, voice-controlled assistance systems in manufacturing.