Benjamin Haefner

• Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Given today's demand shift for product variants triggered by different market segments, manufacturing companies are facing high degrees of complexity, when utilising their global production networks. To remain competitive, companies need to prepare proactively for increasing demand dynamics by using the adaptability of their production network and...

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), many of which operate as suppliers in global production networks (GPN), often times lack behind large enterprises in terms of Industry 4.0 implementation. For this reason, scientific contributions recommend SMEs to approach Industry 4.0 through pilot projects in which individual Industry 4.0 use cases are...

In Zeiten der Globalisierung und Digitalisierung führen Silodenken und Protektionismus zu Wettbewerbsnachteilen aller Partner eines Wertschöpfungsnetzwerkes. Ineffizienzen zeigen sich zum Beispiel durch hohen Ausschuss und geringe Margen der Zulieferer für die Produktion hochpräziser Produkte. Der Beitrag zeigt auf, wie Kollaboration in der Supply...

In Zeiten der Globalisierung und Digitalisierung führen Silodenken und Protektionismus zu Wettbewerbsnachteilen aller Partner eines Wertschöpfungsnetzwerkes. Ineffizienzen zeigen sich zum Beispiel durch hohen Ausschuss und geringe Margen der Zulieferer für die Produktion hochpräziser Produkte. Der Beitrag zeigt auf, wie Kollaboration in der Supply...

Sheet moulding compound is a widely used fibre‐reinforced material. Generally, it consists of discontinuous glass fibres in a thermoset matrix system. Due to the finite fibre length, mechanical properties of structural components are limited. To overcome this drawback, sheet moulding compound is locally reinforced with a unidirectional carbon fibre...

Discontinuous fiber-reinforced Sheet Moulding Compound (SMC) in combination with continuous carbon fiber patches provide a high design freedom in combination with good weight-specific properties. However, the application of these materials requires a strategic and exact positioning of the patches, necessitating the consideration of unavoidable manu...

An increasingly uncertain and dynamic competitive environment is challenging industrial companies nowadays. Against this backdrop, companies are focusing on their core competences. They organize their production in global production networks. While the competitiveness of production networks could be maintained for a long time by optimizing individu...

X-Ray Computed Tomography (CT) has been successfully introduced into industrial applications in the last few years. Recent industrial needs aim at increasing the accessibility of CT technology to more users than only measurement experts. Suitable concepts for user support have been developed in the past. However, these user support concepts do not...

As a result of the increasing interdependencies within global production networks, the importance of an improved coordination of the associated individual processes is continuously rising. In particular, enormous potential is expected from a stronger integration of production and logistics planning and control. While previous approaches have mainly...

Today, companies of all industries are part of global production networks. They have a variety of performance relationships with suppliers and customers. Digitalization offers the potential to exchange more information between the partners of global production networks. This may improve operational performance. Especially within the three business...

Hybride faserverstärkte Kunststoffe kombinieren die Vorteile ihrer unterschiedlichen Fasertypen und -materialien. Während des teuren Herstellungsprozesses kann es zu Fertigungsabweichungen kommen, deren Auswirkung auf die Bauteilfunktionalität unbekannt ist. Die Integration von Inline-Messtechnik zur quantitativen Erfassung der Abweichungen sowie d...

Multi-variant products to be assembled on mixed-model assembly lines at locations within a production network need to be scheduled locally. Scheduling is a highly complex task especially if it simultaneously covers the assignment of orders, which are product variants to be assembled within a production period, to assembly lines as well as their seq...

In the context of Industry 4.0, the development of maintainable and scalable applications becomes a core activity to master for industrial companies. To offer convincing trainings, learning factories have to coordinate the development of IT and hardware solutions with training concepts. The development of maintainable, modular and stable IT solutio...

Production Management is an important issue for organizations that spend considerable amounts of investment annually on personnel training. Especially in the era of Industry 4.0 and Intelligent Manufacturing, considering the exponential growth of new knowledge and information, personnel need to update and supplement the necessary knowledge. Neverth...

Enabled by the development of internet technologies, cyber-physical production systems (CPPS) are expected to open up entirely new possibilities to improve the efficiency of existing assembly systems of industrial companies. Nevertheless, realizing the potential of CPPS still remains a difficult task for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME), gi...

Micro-transmissions, consisting of micro-gears with a module <200µm, are used in manifold industrial applications, e.g. the medical industry. Due to the technological limits of their manufacturing processes, micro-gears show large shape deviations compared to their size, which significantly influence their lifetime. Thus, for micro-gears a model ha...

Companies are confronted with increasing product quality requirements to manufacture high quality products, close to technological limits, in an economic way. The implementation of adaptive quality control strategies (QCS) in production offers an approach to cope with this challenge. In this paper, new function-oriented QCS by means of selectively...

Zum Erreichen einer minimalen Messunsicherheit ist es in der industriellen Computertomographie (CT) nötig, der Messaufgabe angemessene Einstellungen zu wählen. Aufgrund der vielfältigen Einstellmöglichkeiten müssen die richtigen Einstellungen langwierig durch systematische Variation ermittelt werden. Der Artikel schlägt unter Berücksichtigung der C...

Companies operating assembly systems in global production networks constantly have to deal with change drivers. For the design of adaptable assembly systems, change drivers can be considered as fluctuating KPIs, such as labor costs, as well as changing KPI targets, such as rising quality requirements. In this paper, a concept for the design of chan...

Kurzfassung Der Serieneinsatz der additiven Fertigung ist maßgeblich durch die hohen Kosten und der geringen Produktivität der Verfahren limitiert. Der hier vorgestellte Ansatz zeigt, wie die Wirtschaftlichkeit des Laser-Strahlschmelzens (LBM) durch die Kombination mit etablierten Fertigungsverfahren erhöht werden kann. Ziel ist es, nur solche Funk...

Micro-transmissions are used in manifold industrial applications, e.g. the medical industry. They consist of micro-gears with a module ≤200 μm showing large shape deviations compared to their size. Their main function is a proper operation over the required lifetime. Thus, for micro-gears lifetime prognosis dependent on their specific geometrical d...

As today manufacturing is not only subject to a single factory, but a network of globally distributed production sites, the goal-oriented encouragement of professional capacities is the motivation for the Learning Factory on Global Production (LGP). In this context, the design of a competency-based and action-oriented didactic and methodological co...

Durch die vielfältigen Anwendungsgebiete der faserverstärkten Kunststoffe entstehen individuelle Anforderungen an die Qualität der gefertigten Bauteile. Diese kann durch unterschiedliche Prüfverfahren unter Laborbedingungen bereits zuverlässig charakterisiert werden. Die Herausforderung für die Industrie besteht darin, diese Mess- und Prüftechniken...

Industrie 4.0 ist ein Enabler für wandlungsfähige Montagesysteme. Am Beispiel der skalierbaren Automatisierung eines Montagesystems für Elektromotoren wird der effektive Einsatz von Industrie 4.0-Konzepten und -Komponenten aufgezeigt. Exemplarisch werden die Applikation einer dezentralen Steuerung sowie ein integriertes Robotiksystem vorgestellt. E...

Steigende Anforderungen an die Produktqualität stellen Unternehmen vor die Herausforderung, günstige Produkte nahe der technologischen Fertigungsgrenzen zu produzieren. Die Paarung von Montagekomponenten mit angepassten Produktionsstrategien bietet in diesem Umfeld mögliche Lösungsansätze. Neue Informations- und Kommunikationstechnologien im Kontex...

Nowadays, micro motors are used in combination with micro transmissions in manifold industrial applications such as dental drills or the equipment for minimally invasive surgery in the medical industry, hexapod micro positioning systems for wafer processing in the field of industrial automation or adjustable automotive components such as fixings of...

Based on the fundamental principle of teaching psychology that retentiveness increases if students actively apply learning topics rather than only attend oral or visual presentations, the concept of learning factories becomes more and more popular. Academic education in the field of production science is imparted by means of real-world manufacturin...

In high-tech production, companies often deal with the manufacturing of assemblies with quality requirements close to the technological limits. Selective and adaptive production systems are means to cope with this challenge. In this context new measurement technologies and IT-systems offer the opportunity to generate and use real-time quality data...

Bei unreifen Produktionstechnologien, wie der Batterieproduktion für elektromobile Anwendungen, ist eine geeignete Integration von Mess- und Prüftechnik in die Prozesskette von großer Relevanz. Der Fachartikel stellt einen Ansatz zur Planung der Prüfmittelallokation in einer Prozesskette vor. Die Methodik beruht auf der Kombination von Simulations-...

Companies in the manufacturing industry today are faced with increasing challenges with respect to cost effectiveness, lead time and quality of the production system. Dealing with these contradictory goals, an important task is the selection of suitable solutions for the integration of inspection processes within the process chain, which are necess...

Computed tomography provides large potential for the quality assurance of micro gears due to its high information density. In this article, an advanced data evaluation strategy based on areal gear parameters, as well as a methodology to determine the task-specific measurement uncertainty by means of computed tomography are presented.

This paper presents a new principle of harvesting thermal energy at small temperature differences based on bidirectional actuation of a ferromagnetic shape memory alloy (FSMA) cantilever. The thermally induced change of magnetization of the ferromagnetic cantilever tip is used to generate a current according to Faraday's law. The layout, fabricatio...

The development and manufacturing of highly precise micro-mechatronic systems, such as MEMS applications, is a challenging task due to the complexity and variety of their manufacturing technologies, as well as their high quality requirements. Within the context of the product engineering process of micro-mechatronic systems, quality inspection by m...