Research focus: Activity-based scenario development »Production work of the future«

The use of work equipment and production systems is based on the current implementation status in companies (economic necessity and boundary conditions due to product and process parameters) as well as technological, organizational and social developments. For this reason, a well-founded assessment of the next development steps requires a profound knowledge of the initial situation of assembly in companies. To this end, the initial situation is to be described in a structured manner on the basis of concrete examples of companies (from SMEs to corporate groups). This will help to identify relevant influencing factors for the design of future-proof assembly systems and to be able to assess possible obstacles and drivers of technological developments at an early stage. The basis for this is provided by existing work on the description of today's work profiles. The desired result is the development of compatible scenarios for the production work of the future in assembly and their regular testing and design in demonstrators.

Currently, the focus is on the following key topics:

• Broadening the knowledge base on IT-supported production work of the future, especially in the area of classifying current opportunities through digitization and automation
• Continuation of the survey formats in the form of an industry panel "Future Production Work"
• Development of metrics for recording and evaluating bottleneck variables of automation/digitization