Transformed and competitive: digitizing the supply industry

The demands on products and production are changing at an ever-faster pace - this is one of the greatest challenges, especially in the automotive sector. Investment cycles are becoming shorter and shorter; for hardware they are less than five years and for software even less than a year. In the past, for example, lathes were purchased and operated economically for more than fifteen years with good planning. Today, this is no longer possible since no-one can foresee which key manufacturing technologies will be in demand in five years' time.

At Fraunhofer IPA, we help you prepare for the transformation and enable you to respond to it flexibly. We offer know-how and extensive experience in:

• Corporate strategy and development
• Digitization
• Frugal innovations
• IT architectures
• Factory planning and production management

We assist you at operational as well as at strategic level. The following aspects are particularly important to us:

• The right digitization strategy
  • What should the digitization strategy look like?
  • What is the focus of the transformation?
  • Which guiding principles apply to the digitization process and which sub-areas need to be addressed?
• The right IT strategy through Use Case Roadmapping
  
  • Which use cases must be enabled in the future?
  • How can we achieve IT standards across all production plants?
  • Who do we involve in use case development and what information is contained in the cases?
• Advice on functional IT architecture
  • Which functions should the IT landscape cover?
  • What exactly does the future IT architecture look like in your company?
• MES/APS/ERP selection
  • Which MES, APS, ERP and other complementary tools are best suited?
  • What makes the most sense from a functional, technical and business perspective?
• IIoT selection and manufacturing IT services
  • Which IIoT platform and which services based on it are best suited?
  • What makes the most sense from a functional, technical and business perspective?
• Technical implementation support
  • Planning rollouts
  • Integrating the services
  • Filling functional GAPs with own services
  • Implementation support and further development of the IT architecture
• Organizational implementation support
  • Assessing and controlling the effectiveness of the initiated measures
  • Change measures accompanying implementation
  • Selecting partners and the right cooperation model
  • Determining the permanence of Use Case Roadmapping and the further development process.

We would be happy to discuss your particular tasks, challenges and questions with you in person or by telephone - please get in touch!