Data acquisition to enable Research, Education and Training in Learning Factories and Makerspaces

Abstract

Learning Factories have provided new ways of education and training for the future workforce and furthermore opened new research fields. The Institute of Innovation and Industrial Management has opened its Learning Factory - the LEAD Factory - in the year 2014, with a focus on lean, energy efficiency, agility and digitalization. With the opening of an academic Makerspace - the Schumpeter Laboratory for Innovation - in spring 2019, there is new potential for not only looking at production topics but extending that to earlier stages in the product life cycle like the product development. To realize the full potential of both facilities it is vital to acquire meaningful data, analyze it and take actions accordingly. While the LEAD Factory has developed several ways of data acquisition throughout the past years, the Schumpeter Laboratory for Innovation is at the very beginning of this process. The aim of this paper is (1) the outlining of differences of the existing LEAD Factory and the new Schumpeter Laboratory for Innovation regarding research, education and training, (2) the different purposes of use for the acquired data and (3) a data acquisition concept in an academic Makerspace on the example of the Schumpeter Laboratory for Innovation including suitable technology.