Getting Small Medium Enterprises started on Industry 4.0 using retrofitting solutions

Abstract

Joining Industry 4.0 is the important topic for businesses to be successful in the future. Businesses need to improve their production efficiency and product quality to stay competitive. A buzzword in solving this problem: digitization. But especially small medium enterprises (SME) in the manufacturing sector face several challenges on their way to digitized productions, which can be allocated to two different origins: people and production site. Furthermore, the employees’ competences as well as their confidence regarding digitization play a major role in mastering digital transformation. In this context, subjects like employee training, digital assistance and retrofitting become bigger issues. Therefore, the Digital Capability Center (DCC) Aachen developed a learning factory concept to practically introduce the subject of digitization and digital transformation to businesses from various sectors. The DCC’s aim is to actively support SMEs in getting started on industry 4.0. This paper describes the challenges of digitization for German SMEs and presents opportunities to overcome these challenges by depicting the concept of the DCCs learning factory. Thereby a focus is set on how selected training modules on the model factory site teach businesses the basics in digital transformation and which possibilities in retrofitting of existing machinery equipment can help SMEs to take their first steps in industry 4.0. Technical use cases of a mobile sensor kit as well as an IoT platform are presented and assessed how SMEs can benefit from their implementation.