How sustainable and resilient production helps secure future competitiveness

30th Aachen Machine Tool Colloquium How sustainable and resilient production helps secure future competitiveness

The Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University and the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT will discuss the question of how the Internet of Production (IoP) can support this process and at the same time make companies crisis-proof during the 30th Aachen Machine Tool Colloquium (AWK) on September 22 and 23, 2021, at Eurogress Aachen and in digital form.

Aachen – Industrial production today is only about one thing: productivity. Until now, the values behind this term have prevented a zero-emission and sustainable production, even though it would already be technologically and economically possible. However, changing requirements of the capital market from a plain financial orientation to a holistic view of sustainability, demand that German companies rethink the concept of productivity.

With the effects of the Corona pandemic hitting many manufacturing companies and changing the global economy in the long term, once again trend-setting questions are arising around the future of production technology. At this new date this fall, the 30th Aachen Machine Tool Colloquium (AWK) will therefore also be about strengthening the industrial resilience of companies: the aim is to enable companies to deal successfully with drastic crises and to be able to operate profitably again within a short period of time. At the same time, the organizers want to sharpen the entrepreneurial view of the future so that the production turnaround towards a sustainable productivity can be achieved. For the visitors of the event, the colloquium should provide important impulses to remain competitive in an international comparison in the long term.

AWK’21’s new guiding theme, “Turning Data into Sustainability”, is designed to show how manufacturing companies can use on-demand data collection and machine learning to achieve rapid, error-free improvements in serial production, and how they can thereby produce in a resilient and sustainable manner.

Limit overproduction and reduce resource consumption

Over the past 100 years, industrialization has taken hold of almost all sectors of the economy and has been characterized by continuous cost optimization, time savings and quality improvements. However, the resulting overproduction, besides being economically reasonable, has led to a rapid increase in resource consumption and CO₂ emissions. Although this is the reason why large parts of the population can now afford to own purchased goods such as clothing, appliances, vehicles, machines or infrastructure, the production of these goods consumes energy and raw materials, the recuperation of which is often impossible.

Today, this capital- and resource-intensive productivity thinking is being overtaken by the future image of a more ecologically minded society. As a result, the capital market is also changing its target: away from the capital-intensive business models of industry. The focus of investors is changing – toward environmental, social and corporate governance issues that are forcing manufacturing companies to make sustainable changes.

Using digitization to quantify the true costs of production

The organizers of the Aachen Machine Tool Colloquium therefore see one answer to the resulting challenges in a transition towards a sustainable and emission-free production design. The…