Distribution of Integrated Business Applications

New corporate developments, such as globalization, diversification and process orientation, are posing a challenge to the degree of integration of business application software. International standard software designed to meet the requirements of all types of business is acquiring greater strategic significance. The increased need for flexibility, localization, and scalable growth makes it necessary for highly integrated businesses applications to be distributable. Possible scenarios reflect managerial and organizational requirements. Additional mechanisms must be incorporated and business processes adapted to compensate for the increased autonomy of sub-applications. Reprint of an article from WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK 35(5)1993:455–464

Ten Years of Industrie 4.0

A decade after its introduction, Industrie 4.0 has been established globally as the dominant paradigm for the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry. Amalgamating research-based results and practical experience from the German industry, this contribution reviews the progress made in implementing Industrie 4.0 and identifies future fields of action from a technological and application-oriented perspective. Putting the human in the center, Industrie 4.0 is the basis for data-based value creation, innovative business models, and agile forms of organization. Today, in the German manufacturing industry, the Internet of Things and cyber–physical production systems are a reality in newly built factories, and the connectivity of machinery has been significantly increased in existing factories. Now, the trends of industrial AI, edge computing up to the edge cloud, 5G in the factory, team robotics, autonomous intralogistics systems, and trustworthy data infrastructures must be leveraged to strengthen resilience, sovereignty, semantic interoperability, and sustainability. This enables the creation of digital innovation ecosystems that ensure long-term adaptability in a volatile economic and geopolitical environment. In sum, this review represents a comprehensive assessment of the status quo and identifies what is needed in the future to reap the rewards of the groundwork done in the first ten years of Industrie 4.0

The future of work in the digital transformation: Agility, lifelong learning and the role of employers and works councils in changing times ; a paper by the acatech and Jacobs Foundation Human Resources Working Group – Forum for HR Directors on the Future of Work

The digital transformation will result in fundamental changes to work and organisational processes within companies. These changes must be shaped in a way that benefits businesses and employees in equal measure. The HR-Kreis (HR Working Group) – a forum for Human Resources Directors and academic experts created in 2014 by acatech and the Jacobs Foundation – identified three aspects that are critical to this goal: organisational agility, a wider under¬standing of lifelong learning and the innovation-oriented develop¬ment of company-level co-determination. In this acatech DISCUSSION, the HR Working Group sets out the key challenges in these three areas and formulates proposals as to how corporate policy, statutory regulations and co-determination procedures can be developed in order to achieve a successful trans¬formation. The observations in this report are based on the belief that employees should have their own individual say in shaping the digital transformation. This will require a new form of governance that promotes a willingness to embrace change and creates the freedom to experiment