New paradigms of advanced manufacturing engineering

Value-adding in a turbulent environment requires a holistic view and a multi-scale approach respecting the triad of social, ecological and economical sustainability. Based on the scientific concept of transformability, developed at the University of Stuttgart, advanced Manufacturing Engineering associates digital and virtual engineering, materials and process engineering, intelligent production systems as well as knowledge-based management. The aim is to develop Factories of the Future, that are competitive and sustainable within all branches of industry that transform available resources into customer-driven products. This transformation is understood as a highly dynamic system and its effectiveness depends on the performance of every single element and its network. This contribution presents actual megatrends with impact on production, basics on system theory view on factories as well as transformability. New paradigms within this context are networked production and technical intelligence. Furthermore actual projects as well as the international research initiative ManuFuture are presented.