Competencies of Production in SMEs in Assembly Industries in a Digital, Volatile Business Environment

SMEs are currently confronted with major challenges such as increasing uncertainty and volatility. In order to face these challenges, agility and digitalization can be implemented. Both concepts bring about numerous opportunities and new competency requirements. Currently, there are few scientifically based, practical training courses that focus on digitization and/or agility. The aim of this paper is to provide a roadmap for the development of the training concept. In this training, participants will be able to acquire theoretical content on a learning platform in a flexible way and they will be able to apply this knowledge in a learning factory. Based on a literature overview, requirements for such a training and the necessary skills in a digital, volatile business environment will be given

Integration of Tactical Aspects into Strategic Production Network Planning

Nowadays, production companies are facing an increasingly volatile environment. Due to increasing globalization, but also de-globalization, taking into consideration an internal production network is becoming more and more important for companies, all in order to be able to counteract in an agile way the uncertainties such as swings in the demand. Current production network planning procedures focus on (re-)locating decisions without delving into what happens inside the plants, neglecting the dynamics of production networks, following a rigid top-down approach during the configuration phase, and they do not integrate the effects of planning tasks at the factory level (tactical and operational planning). In order to be able to make strategic decisions with a well-founded database regarding the production network, the effects on the tactical and operational level must be considered in an iterative way during the strategic decision-making process. The aim of this research is to define the requirements for an approach to strategic production network planning, which considers the effects at the tactical and operational level in an iterative way, and to develop a process model, derived from the requirements, that in its five phases considers the deficiencies of the existing approaches

Transformation of Cognitive Assistance Systems into Augmented Reality

The field of Augmented Reality (AR) has received increasing attention in recent years, as AR can be applied to a wide range of problems. The use of AR offers great potential, especially in the industrial sector. Among many applications in this area, one promising application is the augmentation of cognitive assistance systems. Much research has already been done on the development of augmented support systems but it is still lacking on how to transform existing assistance systems into an AR application. This paper focuses on this transformation and presents a process model that intends to support the migration or digitalization of existing support systems into an AR application. An experimental study validates the proposed approach and derives recommendations for action

Carbon Footprint Management In Austrian SMEs: Strategies, Mitigation Measures, Challenges And Case Studies

The term Anthropocene describes the dawn of an epoch in which human activities have become the dominant force destructing the ecosystem and causing climate change. By contributing at least one fifth to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, industry has a significant environmental impact. Reducing these emissions requires coordinated action along the value chains building on transnational agreements and regulations. Based on the European Green Deal, EU-countries and their industrial companies see themselves forced to react to emerging regulations considering their cooperate carbon footprint and mitigation strategies as well as the assessment and improvement of their carbon footprints. In this paper we report findings of case studies in Austrian SMEs that show how such companies can react to these challenges. We illustrate an approach to identify existing reduction potentials by engineering optimization and product life-cycle-design to reduce corporate and product carbon footprints and prepare for future reporting regulations and to achieve market advantages

NKX2-3 Transcriptional Regulation of Endothelin-1 and VEGF Signaling in Human Intestinal Microvascular Endothelial Cells

BACKGROUND: NKX2-3 is associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). NKX2-3 is expressed in microvascular endothelial cells and the muscularis mucosa of the gastrointestinal tract. Human intestinal microvascular endothelial cells (HIMECs) are actively involved in the pathogenesis of IBD and IBD-associated microvascular dysfunction. To understand the cellular function of NKX2-3 and its potential role underlying IBD pathogenesis, we investigated the genes regulated by NKX2-3 in HIMEC using cDNA microarray. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: NKX2-3 expression was suppressed by shRNA in two HIMEC lines and gene expression was profiled by cDNA microarray. Pathway Analysis was used to identify gene networks according to biological functions and associated pathways. Validation of microarray and genes expression in intestinal tissues was assessed by RT-PCR. NKX2-3 regulated genes are involved in immune and inflammatory response, cell proliferation and growth, metabolic process, and angiogenesis. Several inflammation and angiogenesis related signaling pathways that play important roles in IBD were regulated by NKX2-3, including endothelin-1 and VEGF-PI3K/AKT-eNOS. Expression levels of NKX2-3, VEGFA, PI3K, AKT, and eNOS are increased in intestinal tissues from IBD patients and expression levels of EDN1 are decreased in intestinal tissues from IBD patients. These results demonstrated the important roles of NKX2-3, VEGF, PI3K, AKT, eNOS, and EDN1 in IBD pathogenesis. Correlation analysis showed a positive correlation between mRNA expression of NKX2-3 and VEGFA and a negative correlation between mRNA expression of NKX2-3 and EDN1 in intestinal tissues from IBD patients. CONCLUSION/RELEVANCE: NKX2-3 may play an important role in IBD pathogenesis by regulating endothelin-1 and VEGF signaling in HIMECs

Transferring an Interdisciplinary Student Product Development Project to Full Online Conduction

"Product Innovation" is a 7-month product development course, conducted at the Institute of Innovation and Industrial Management with international and interdisciplinary student teams. A close connection and interaction between industry, students and research has been an important part of this project-based learning course. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the worldwide occurring lockdowns, students were not able anymore to interact and conduct their projects in the proven manner. Being in a critical phase of the project, the course concept had to be reorganized and transferred to online conduction by using computer supported collaboration work within a few days. Both observations and surveys were used to compare changes in student´s behaviour and results of the project. This paper will describe 1) the original situation and course concept, 2) show how the course was transformed to online conduction, 3) describe the observations made and 4) analyse how the students experienced the transformation

Learning factories and sustainable engineering : competencies for students and industrial workforce

Sustainability and the circular economy are becoming increasingly important for industry and academia. Learning factories at higher education institutions around the globe attempt to educate students and industrial workers on these topics through specially developed training modules. To successfully implement measures to mitigate issues, such as climate change, product life cycle considerations - in which different phases may require different worker competencies - are indispensable. In this context, we provide some evaluation of learning factory use cases regarding sustainability. The use cases are evaluated on product life cycle phases and respective worker sustainability and circular economy competencies. The results show that the majority of the use cases focus on the production life cycle phase; product development, product use, and end-of-life have either not or very rarely been addressed. Our general conclusions and implications relate to these findings with a recommendation that learning factories expand their training capabilities

Acquisition and Analysis of a Meme Corpus to Investigate Web Culture

Memes are a popular part of today’s online culture reflecting current developments in pop-culture, politics or sports and are created and shared in large scale on a daily basis. We present first results of an ongoing project about the study of online-memes via computational Distant Reading methods. We focus on the meme type of image macros. Image macros memes consists of a reusable image template with a top and/or bottom text and are the most common and popular meme types. We gather a corpus for 16 of the most popular image macros memes by crawling the platform knowyourmeme.com thus creating a corpus consisting of 7840 memes incarnations and their corresponding metadata. Furthermore, we gather the text of the memes via OCR and make this corpus publicly available for the research community. We explore the application of various text mining methods like Topic Modeling and Sentiment Analysis to analyze the language, the topics and the moods expressed via online memes

Agile Powertrain Development: Considerations to Incorporate Agile Principles

Pressure to increase effectiveness and efficiency drives the product development process. The software industry has been using agile development approaches due to their advantages when coping with uncertainties and simultaneously increasing value. Therefore, the following work deals with the considerations of agile powertrain development. In order to identify important conditions for the incorporation of agile principles into powertrain development, semistructured interviews were conducted with experts from an engineering company. Having identified agile development challenges, advantages, and principles, the next step is comparing agile principles with the current principles of conventional powertrain development. Furthermore, a basic understanding of the powertrain development process regarding the incorporation of agile principles is established, the main attributes of powertrain development are investigated, and the key disciplines involved are identified. Finally, a model is created to assess whether the application of an agile or conventional development approach is more suitable

Agile Powertrain Development: Considerations to Incorporate Agile Principles

Pressure to increase effectiveness and efficiency drives the product development process. The software industry has been using agile development approaches due to their advantages when coping with uncertainties and simultaneously increasing value. Therefore, the following work deals with the considerations of agile powertrain development. In order to identify important conditions for the incorporation of agile principles into powertrain development, semistructured interviews were conducted with experts from an engineering company. Having identified agile development challenges, advantages, and principles, the next step is comparing agile principles with the current principles of conventional powertrain development. Furthermore, a basic understanding of the powertrain development process regarding the incorporation of agile principles is established, the main attributes of powertrain development are investigated, and the key disciplines involved are identified. Finally, a model is created to assess whether the application of an agile or conventional development approach is more suitable