The Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour and Housing and the Baden-Württemberg Industry 4.0 Alliance have awarded the "Digitalized Production Control" simulation game in the "100 Places for Industry 4.0 in Baden-Württemberg" competition. This is the fourth time Fraunhofer IPA has been honored since the competition began in 2015.
A maximum of seven players take part in the simulation game. There is one customer, one production manager and a maximum of five workers. The roles may not be changed during the game. The workers produce toy robots in two rounds. The first round involves production according to the real specifications of lean production, while the second involves digitalized production. Both rounds last around one hour each. At the end of the game, a balance sheet is drawn up. Ozan Yesilyurt, who supervises the simulation together with his colleague Viorel Petrut Draghici, says: "The simulation takes away the workers' fear of digital tools. They later realize that a significant increase in efficiency has been achieved with Industry 4.0 applications."
State Secretary Katrin Schütz from the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labor and Housing presented the award to the business game on 3 December 2019 in Stuttgart's New Palace. In previous years, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Baden-Württemberg Industry 4.0 Alliance have already awarded prizes to the Industry 4.0 Application Center, the Future Work Lab and the Virtual Fort Knox cloud IT platform.
However, if you want to play the "Digitalized Production Control" simulation game, you don't have to visit the Fraunhofer IPA in Stuttgart. "We are happy to come by," says Yesilyurt. "A conventional meeting room with tables set up in a U-shape is all you need. We bring everything else with us."
