Jens Christian Göbel

Smart Engineering as Enabler for the 4th Industrial Revolution

The convergence and synergies of the latest ICT developments in the areas of embedded micro-devices, mobile communication, hardware infrastructures, as well as Internet and software technologies penetrate any artifact and product in our real lives. Traditional products are becoming more and more multidisciplinary, intelligent, networked, agile, and include product-related services. However, not only consumer goods (i.e. smartphones) but also industrial goods are becoming ‘smart’. Smart Product Service Systems (smartPSS) will dominate most industrial sectors in the near future and lead to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Thus, the engineering of these smartPSS will be of crucial importance for the competitiveness of industrial companies. This contribution summarizes the related ICT developments and describes their successive penetration of industrial products. It points out the need for new Smart Engineering approaches, which also use the latest ICT innovation and similarly smart features like smartPSS. Smart Engineering defines the highest level of requirements for engineering processes, methods, and tools.

Decision Support Framework for PLM Harmonization Projects within Industrial Companies

To this day, as a result of increasing PLM penetration and continuously changing company structures, several PLM solutions have evolved over time and now exist in parallel within many companies. Disharmonized PLM solutions can impede productivity and flexibility in cross-division cooperation and company-internal reorganization projects. A lot of companies carry out PLM harmonization projects with the goal of improving their current situation due to an optimal coordination, adaptation, and standardization of their existing PLM solutions. The present paper introduces a comprehensive framework which supports fundamental decisions that have to be made in this context. This framework allows an objectified determination of harmonization concepts by using both directly and non-directly monetarily quantifiable measures taking into account the perspectives of all of the actors involved. This approach emerged from the experiences gained from several industrial use cases, including the one that is illustrated in this paper.

Virtual Twins as Integrative Components of Smart Products

Current ICT developments in the areas of micro-devices, hardware infrastructure as well as internet and software technologies lead to a change of the physical products we know today. Traditional products are becoming smarter every day. The product generation meeting these innovations is called “Smart Products”. As a driver of the 4th industrial revolution these Smart Products will dominate most industrial sectors in the future. Product related data and the management of this data along the entire product lifecycle in the PLM context are becoming core components of these Smart Products. This is especially true for the tremendous amount of operational data generated by the Smart Products during their use phase. However, the management of Smart Products’ data related to a magnitude of heterogeneous product models (virtual product twins) will be crucial for the persistence of industrial companies. This paper illustrates that the virtual product twins have to be considered as integral components of Smart Products by giving concrete examples for the application of various virtual and physical products in different lifecycle phases.

Towards Smart Product Lifecycle Management with an Integrated Reconfiguration Management

Recent ICT innovations determine dramatically changes of traditional products towards intelligent, connected Smart Products. These product-related changes also imply the need for a fundamental adaption and enhancement of traditional Product Lifecycle Management approaches. Analyzing the main characteristics of Smart Products reveals that lifecycle management approaches for Smart Products especially have to extend their focus on the product use phase. A core challenge in this context is to provide suitable methods and IT tools for the reconfiguration of Smart Products across different engineering domains. This contribution introduces a conceptual approach for the reconfiguration of Smart Products, which considers the dynamical changes of virtual and physical product instances based on the virtual product twin. This approach was implemented and validated prototypically in a model-environment considering smart vehicles, that where temporarily reconfigured during their use phase.

Lifecycle Management industrieller Produkt-Service-Systeme

Die Lebenszyklen industrieller Produkt-Service Systems (IPSS) sind gekennzeichnet durch eine enge Interaktion zwischen Anbieter und Kunden. stark vernetzte Sach- und Dienstleistungsstrukturen sowie eine hohe Anderungsdynamik in der Betriebsphase. Die konventionellen Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)-Methoden, -Prozesse und -Werkzeuge adressieren diese HLB-Spezifika nur unzureichend und sind daher fur ein integriertes Management industrieller PSS im gesamten Lebenszyklus nicht geeignet. In diesem Kapitel wird ein wissensintensives Konzept zur Erweiterung des heutigen PLM-Ansatzes fur ein ganzheitliches Management von IPSS beschrieben, welches eine einheitliche Daten- und Prozessorganisation, ein dynamisches Anderungs- und Feedbackmanagement sowie eine Entscheidungsunterstutzung entlang des gesamten Lebenszyklus industrieller Produkt-Service System umfasst.