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PublicationInteraktives Lagebild - Ein Werkzeug für das Krisenmanagement in prozessorientierten Unternehmen( 2021)Viele Unternehmen bringt die Krise um den Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 in existenzielle Nöte. Der plötzliche Ausfall von Zulieferern und Kunden oder eine kurzfristige Änderung von Regularien (z. B. Kurzarbeitsregeln) stellen Betriebe vor Herausforderungen. Hinzu kommen sich laufend ändernde Einflüsse und Informationsquellen. Ein gemeinsames Lagebild bietet Einsatzkräften im Sicherheitsbereich seit langem Orientierung und wird nun auch für Unternehmen relevant. Die Verknüpfung und Visualisierung von externen Informationen aus dem Unternehmensumfeld (z. B. Corona-Fallzahlen in der Region eines Hauptzulieferers) mit den internen Fähigkeiten eines Unternehmens (z. B. Verfügbarkeit der Mitarbeiter) bleibt jedoch ein ungelöstes Problem. Dieser Beitrag zeigt, wie ein Lagebild auch für Unternehmen zu einem zielgerichteten Handeln beitragen kann.
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PublicationA contribution to the interpretation of organizational resilience (Or) based on the analysis of key drivers and conceptual elements( 2021)Organizations are increasingly confronted with unexpected events, which can occur within or outside the organization and relate to various dimensions or aspects. The significance and extent of its impact on the organization can be quite surprising (Duchek 2020). Despite the fact that academic interest in this subject area has grown steadily in recent years, its conceptualization is not yet fully developed. There is no consensus on the meaning of resilience and the elements it contains. This paper contributes to the understanding and need for organizational resilience (OR) and also reveals gaps in its conceptualization. Resilience is understood as the ability of an organization to repel, prepare for, consider, absorb, recover from and adapt ever more successfully to actual or potential adverse events. Those events are either catastrophes or processes of change with catastrophic outcome which can have human, technical or natural causes.(Thoma 2014) In order to survive in an uncertain environment and promote future success, organizations must be able to deal with all these manifestations of the unexpected and catapult themselves out of the crisis. They have to develop a capacity for resilience that enables them to react appropriately to unexpected events and to make capital from events that could potentially threaten the survival of an organization (Lengnick-Hall et al. 2011; Duchek 2020; Denyer 2017; Aguilar 1967). In literature and practice, there are various approaches to OR, which consist of phase models that also allow an assessment of an organization as resilience using a maturity model. From the examined methods in this paper it follows that the resilience capability is questioned only after occurrence of an adverse event and no "preparation phase" according to the Fraunhofer resilience cycle exists. This ex post approach endangers not only the competitive position, but also the existence of an organization.
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PublicationPatterns for Resilient Value Creation: Perspective of the German Electrical Industry during the COVID-19 Pandemic( 2021)
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PublicationDevelopment of a Conceptual Understanding of the term Technological Capability( 2021)The term "technological capability" has been studied for almost 40 years. It is an important component of technology strategy that contributes to the success and strengthening of organizations competitiveness. There are numerous attempts to define the term in the literature, but it is always used in different contexts. Thus, the definition of technological capability varies depending on the researcher's perspective and objectives. Therefore, the main objective of this research is to develop an own definition and interpretation of the term technological capability. To this end, an extensive literature review will be conducted to examine the basic concepts and management areas of technological capability and to analyze the individual definitions of the term. The subsequent goal is to derive an understanding of what technological capability is in terms of research and technology organizations.
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PublicationStructured analysis of methodologies for the assessment of the technological capability of RTOs - Using a method engineering approach( 2020)New state-of-the-art technologies in evolving markets enable organizations to lead the competition and gain advantages over their competitors. The constantly changing technological developments and market demands not only affect industrial companies but also Research and Technology Organizations (RTOs). As RTOs are situated between universities and organizations that pursue fundamental research on the one hand, and business entities on the other, they are strongly influenced by changing economical environments. Hence, to generate value for their customers, RTOs need to use state-of-the-art technologies in order to be able to provide high-quality products and services to their customers. In consequence, regular analysis and assessment of the technological capability of RTOs is an important strategy to ensure progress and success. In previous research work a generic process model for the structured analysis of methods used in the context of the technological capability of Research and Technology Organizations has been developed. Therefore, method engineering approaches have been used as a basis to create a holistic model that can be used as a structured approach for the analysis of methodologies. Building on this, this paper uses the approach to analyze different methodologies. The generic process model of method engineering will be applied to analyze existing methodologies for the assessment of technological capabilities of RTOs in a structured way. Therefore, a literature review is conducted to identify existing methodologies in the context of the technological capabilities of organizations with a special interest in RTOs. Furthermore, the identified methodologies are assessed using the method engineering approach. In a final step, limitations and further developments of methodologies for the assessment of technological capabilities are discussed.
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PublicationMaturity Assessment in Industry 4.0 - A Comparative Analysis of Brazilian and German Companies( 2020)The article presents a comparative analysis of maturity level in Industry 4.0, of Brazilian companies with German Industry, seeking to identify learning opportunities to increase competitiveness. It was used the maturity model in Industry 4.0 developed by VDMA (German Mechanical Engineering Industry Association), applied to German companies, serving as benchmark. The same model was applied to Brazilian companies, from the State of Espírito Santo, located in the most developed region of the country, but with lower industrial density, and which has great challenges to increase its participation in the national and international markets. A field research was carried out with 46 industries, which participated in workshops to understand the fundamentals and to evaluate the maturity level in Industry 4.0. The individual results were processed by the platform of VDMA, indicating the levels in six dimensions of the model and the general result on a scale of 0 to 5. The results of all companies were tabulated, allowing the comparison with the research carried out with German companies. The study showed that, on average, Brazilian companies have the same level of maturity of German companies in readiness for Industry 4.0, with grade 0.9 in a scale of 0 to 5. But, there are significant differences in compared dimensions. 5.6% of German companies are at the advanced level in Industry 4.0, especially the technology developers, while Brazilian companies studied are still at the most basic levels. Both Industries are skeptical about investments in Industry 4.0 and the level of evaluation on Strategy dimension is still low. The comparison of expectations and difficulties allowed identify essential points to support these companies to follow the way to Industry 4.0.
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PublicationEvaluation Model for Mobility Design of Learning Factories( 2020)Shortening product life cycles and increasing, global competition lead to the necessity for companies to become flexible and able to change. The successful conduction of change projects depends to a large extent on the understanding and cooperation of the operating people. The acquisition of knowledge and thus of competence at all levels is of fundamental importance for this. Learning Factories are one of the most sustainable concepts in this respect. Concerning the industrial application, however, Learning Factories require high investment costs and are relatively inflexible in respect to their dedicated facilities and their learning content. This reveals a connection between the success of a Learning Factory in an industrial context and its mobility. In order to be able to evaluate approaches towards the mobility design of Learning Factories more precisely, the decisive drivers for mobility are identified. The assessment of these drivers with regard to the extent of influence on mobility, but also the critical consideration of possible limits, lead to an evaluation model for the mobility design of Learning Factories. Subsequently, this model is tested by applying it to a successfully operating Learning Factory.
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PublicationEffectivity of Learning Factories to convey problem solving competencies( 2020)The ability to solve problems in a structured way is an essential competence of people in a factory, from the shopfloor operator to the management level. This is already the case for established lean management approaches and is gaining relevance with the increasing complexity of production systems through progressive automation and digitisation. As learning factories have shown to be an effective approach for learning and teaching production-related topics in a practical manner, a learning module for the A3 problem solving methodology was implemented at an industrial learning factory. In order to continuously improve the learning and teaching productivity, the effectiveness of different approaches to convey the A3 methodology was investigated with over 100 participants. The results show that while the setting of learning factories can be used in a beneficial way for learning the A3 methodology, additional advantages regarding learning as well as process performance can be generated by including real und current content from the learner`s specific workplaces.
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PublicationImplementation with agile project management approaches: Case study of an industrie 4.0 learning factory in China( 2020)With the ""Made in China 2025"" strategy, the People's Republic of China intends to achieve a turnaround from a cheap production location to a technology pioneer, notably through digital technologies, which necessitates qualification of employees in Chinese production companies. To facilitate this, an Industrie 4.0 Learning Factory is being set up in Jiangsu Province, China. Against the background of a rapidly developing state of the art as well as cultural peculiarities of the Chinese target group, classical project management approaches quickly reach their limits. In order to address continuously changing framework conditions, approaches for an ambidextrous project management as well as agile technical-didactic development of the Learning Factory have been established. This enabled the early adaptation of the Learning Factory to the concrete target group of learners and faster realization of a train-the-trainer concept as well as the efficient execution of repetitive processes with rigid requirements.
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PublicationDesign alternatives for internationally distributed learning factories in global production engineering( 2020)An internationally distributed learning factory (IDLF) provides opportunities to make students aware of intercultural challenges in global production networks. An IDLF is a scalable network of learning factories with value creation processes in spatially distributed locations. It enables collaboration and competition between student groups in distant locations and considers manual and automatic process methods. Due to the high number of design alternatives for IDLFs, a systematic approach for describing attractive characteristics is required. This paper shows design alternatives for IDLFs structural and process organization on the example of learning factories in Germany, Turkey and Vietnam.
