Jahresbericht 2009 - Biba - Universität Bremen

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus-Dieter ThobenDivision IKAPApplied Information and CommunicationTechnology for ProductionHighly productive co-operationsbetween independent companieswith the aim to develop and realizecustomized products are an importantsuccess factor for the competitivenessof the European industry.Due to immense political changesand the emergence of global markets,new ways of co-operations, socalled enterprise networks, can beseen in addition to traditional supplychains. These enterprise networks areoften established to realize a singlecustomers order and thus play animportant role during the conceptualphase (product design) as well asduring the realization phase (production).The research unit IKAP designs,develops and realizes methods andtools to support co-operative, interorganizationalenterprise networks. Itsresearch concentrates on efficientand effective collaborative designand production processes byapplying innovative information andcommunication technologies (ICT).As focus can be seen the collaborativeinteractions of enterprises duringdistributed design and productionprocesses as well as during the lateprocesses of the product life cyclesuch as the usage phase or therecycling phase. The research resultsare integrated in the academic educationof next generation engineers(mechanical engineering, industrialmanagement, systems engineering)at the University of Bremen. Anotherapplication field of research results isin industrial projects where innovativeapproaches are transferred to practicalproblems.The research unit BIBA-IKAP is dividedinto two departments:Collaborative Business inEnterprise NetworksThe department Collaborative Businessin Enterprise Networks developsand implements concepts in theareas of Cooperative Process Managementand Network Life CycleManagement in networked organizations.Thereby classical products aswell as services can be regarded assubjects of cooperation in enterprisenetworks.The thematic priorities of the departmentare Cooperative OrganizationStructures as well as CooperativeInnovation, Risk and Quality Managementin enterprise networks. Theapplication of Gaming-approachesfor competence intermediationand sensitization plus the ExtendedProduct as subject of cooperationin enterprise networks are representativeof the central concepts in thescope of the research work.The department is working methodicallywith following approaches:Cooperative Process ManagementIn this subject field, methods forevaluating processes, for the analysisof requirements while building upnew structures, as well as for thespecification of IT-tools and managementconcepts are used. The goalis generally the prototypical realizationof developed solutions. Corecompetencies are thereby methodsand tools of performance measurementin enterprise networks for theevaluation of distributed businessprocesses, methods and tools forenabling cooperative innovationprocesses in networks and methodsand tools for inter-organizational riskand quality management. In thiscontext, Gaming-approaches as wellare used in order to sensitize professionalswith respect to novel questionsof networked acting or to impartcompetences of concrete topics tothem by playing.Network Life Cycle ManagementThis subject field deals with the lifecycle of a network from its formation,over the operation phase and evolution,until the cooperation is dissolved.Methods to support the formationof networks as well as the operationand dissolution are researched andapplied along the life cycle. The aimespecially is to accelerate the preparednessof networks for initiating ashort-term cooperation by means ofadequate concepts and tools.Intelligent ICT for co-operativeproductionThe department “Intelligent ICT forco-operative production” deals withthe application of the latest IC-technologiesto develop and implementco-operative networks. In this context,acquisition, provision and transformationof process and productrelated information is considered. Thisinformation is used to integrate realproducts with their digital representation,the product avatar, along thewhole product life cycle.By combining the latest communicationtechnologies of the 3rd and4th generation with the latest positioningtechnologies (e.g. Galileo),new context and customer specificservices can be realized along theentire product life cycle. These servicescan improve the competitivenessof today‘s enterprises. By using theinformation triple identity-locationtime,which is in principle availablefor all entities (resources, productsetc.) in real time, new challenges canbe seen when designing networked10