Keywords: Industrie 4.0

Fundings:

In 2015, „Industrie 4.0“ is still just a buzzword for most companies in Austria. However, they understand the increasing importance of the topic. Currently, Austrian companies have a lack of detailed knowledge towards their transformation to Industrie 4.0. Highly qualified employees are a prerequisite for staying competitive in tomorrow’s production industry. Thus, the curriculum of DigiTrans 4.0 – which was collaboratively designed by TU Wien and the industry partners – considers both the core competencies of the participating companies and the recommendations for implementing the strategic initiative Industrie 4.0 [KWH13] by the German Industrie 4.0 Working Group.

DigiTrans 4.0 aims at progressively introducing the participants to the vision of Industrie 4.0. For this purpose the Faculty of Informatics and the Faculty of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering of TU Wien join forces to educate the companies on topics that focus on the integration of Business IT and Production IT as well as on the integration of all information flows in a value network. Accordingly, the DigiTrans 4.0 curriculum is characterized by an inter-disciplinary and modular structure following the motto “cross-over lectures for cross-innovation”. The modules of DigiTrans 4.0 are the following: (1) Product Lifecycle Management, (2) Models and Methods for the Digital Transformation, (3) Industrial Communication and Automated Manufacturing Systems, (4) Value Networks, (5) Integration Engineering and (6) Gender und Workplace 4.0. All these modules are taught in theory and practice and are supported by the Pilot Plant of TU Wien. The participant of DigiTrans 4.0 will get to know a framework and a method set for the digital transformation to be used on their way from the classical automation pyramid to a value network spanning over things, services, and humans.

Given the large size of the consortia, we are able to include companies with a lot of different characteristics. This should foster the multi-disciplinary exchange of ideas and we expect to gain knowledge in the following areas: (i) joint development of new fields of applications in Industrie 4.0, (ii) expansion of TU Wien’s skill set by industry-related topics and (iii) strengthening of the technological development skills and innovation skills in forward-looking areas of technology, such as cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) and Internet of Things (IoT). Last but not least, we aim at fostering sustainable co-operations not only between academia and companies, but also among the participating companies.