News

Digital continuity is the overarching theme of PROSTEP INSIGHT DAYS 2023. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Iris Gräßler will provide an impetus for this. Participation in the online event of Prostep AG with short informative presentations is free of charge and can be registered here.

Mechatronics, machine learning and engineering design – students from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering developed a smart sorting system in the course "Digital Factory". Supervised by Daniel Roesmann, Michael Hieb and Ulrich Hüsken, the students gained practical experience in the field of digital and virtual product creation. The system sorts bottle caps with the help of Artificial Intelligence. After four intensive weeks of project work, successful test trials were celebrated in the Smart Automation Laboratory.

What do weather emergencies, health crises and dangerous maritime situations have in common? All three are application scenarios of the EU project "Critical Action Planning over Extreme-Scale Data". It was launched by the chair of product creation together with 14 partners in Athens on 10/11 January 2023. The project is developing a platform for the real-time management of critical situations based on data streams of extreme scale and complexity.

cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101092749/de

Marc Unverzagt started working as a research associate at the Chair of Product Creation on December 1, 2022. In the area of digital and virtual product creation, he is researching the effective use of innovative technologies in the product creation process. We are looking forward to a great collaboration and wish him much success!

On December 13, 2022, we, the Chair for Product Creation, visited Claas Industrietechnik in Paderborn together with twenty inquisitive students. In a relaxed atmosphere, the budding engineers had the opportunity to experience first-hand the creation of Claas products such as the tracked undercarriage and to come into contact with CIT. Thanks to the high level of vertical integration, everything from gear production to assembly of the crawler track unit was on display. The joint group picture was taken right here, in front of the assembly line of the well-known CIT TerraTrac crawler track unit. Finally, we ended the evening together in a large group with delicious food, cool drinks and intensive discussions.

The 8th annual colloquium of the Institute for Industrial Information Technology (inIT) took place on November 2, 2022 at the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences. It provided a platform for the latest developments and technologies in the context of industrial automation. Michael Hieb gave an insight into current research on the topic of "Generation of synthetic image data for machine vision quality gates". Mr. Hieb's contribution deals with the advantages of synthetic image data for the automation of visual inspection in customer-oriented mass production.

The Chair of Product Creation is developing a virtual learning environment for students with support from the Direct Manufacturing Research Center (DMRC) and EOS GmbH. For teaching in the engineering sciences, it is crucial that students gain practical experience in addition to theoretical fundamentals. With the support of partners at the DMRC, a virtual training lab was created using an additive manufacturing machine as an example. Access is provided via integration into the University of Paderborn's learning management system PANDA.

The Systems Engineering approach according to international standards, easy to understand and tailored to the application in industrial practice - this will soon be available for all of those who want to understand the basics of Systems Engineering or are considering introducing it in their own company. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Iris Gräßler and Dr.-Ing. Christian Oleff from the Chair for Product Creation have completed the book "Systems Engineering – verstehen und industriell umsetzen" after an intensive final sprint. The special feature of this book is not only the practical and easy-to-understand approach towards the international INCOSE Systems Engineering standard, but also the graphical presentation specially developed for this book.

The two authors celebrated the achievement of the long-awaited milestone in the history of the chair together with the supporting research assistants at a joint dinner. Together, the first ideas for a sequel were already born...

The book "Systems Engineering - verstehen und industriell umsetzen" will be published by Springer and can already be pre-ordered through common booksellers (so far only available in German):

link.springer.com/book/9783662645161

Dominik Wiechel and Daniel Preuß presented recent research results of the Chair of Product Creation at the 8th IEEE International Symposium on Systems Engineering 2022. The conference took place in Vienna from 10/24/2022 to 10/26/2022 and offered a variety of topics in the field of Systems Engineering. The paper "Extended RFLP for Complex Technical Systems" was presented and discussed by Dominik Wiechel in the session "Systems Architecture". Daniel Preuß was chair of the session "Requirements and Validation" and presented his paper "Efficient Extraction of Technical Requirements Applying Data Augmentation".

Martha Sondermann works as assistant to Prof. Dr.-Ing. Iris Gräßler and strengthens the chair of Product Creation since September 1, 2022. At the Paderborn University is Mrs. Sondermann known from the financial department and the third-party funding department of the central administration.

We are looking forward to the cooperation with Ms. Sondermann and wish her a good start!

On October 04, 2022, Dr.-Ing. Christian Oleff took over the leadership of the research area Systems Engineering as senior engineer at the Chair of Product Creation. In this area the topics Strategic Planning and Resilient Requirements Engineering (SPRRE) and Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) are researched. We are looking forward to working with Mr. Oleff in his new role!

A night to experience exciting insights in the world of mechanical engineering. As part of the 50th anniversary of the University of Paderborn, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering opened its doors to young and older visitors on September 23, 2022. The Chair of Product Creation also impressed with its hands-on activities. The guests programmed a collaborative robot for the first time, or immersed themselves in the almost limitless world of virtual reality (VR). The chair used these two examples to show how diverse responsible mechanical engineering of the future will be.

The project of the stainless steel pipe manufacturer Butting with the Chair of Product Creation aims to identify promising application areas for existing technologies and core competences. At the second milestone, the collected product ideas and promising markets were evaluated and prioritised. The most attractive success potentials for the markets of tomorrow were adopted and will now be concretised in detail.

The VDI Technical Committee 7.10 "Planning and Development of hybrid service bundles", which was founded in 2020, met for the first time in Paderborn on 19/20 September 22 at the Heinz-Nixdorf Institute. Under the chairmanship of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Iris Gräßler, more than 20 representatives from science and industry came together to discuss current developments in strategic planning. In particular, the challenges of increasing product complexity and uncertainties on the strategic planning and development of hybrid service bundles were analyzed in an interdisciplinary way. The goal is to develop a guideline on strategic planning of product-service systems.

How can employees be specifically scheduled with their individual skills, while at the same time improving production planning? Daniel Roesmann provided answers in his talk on the "Integration of Human Factors into the Assembly Systems of the Future". He presented results from the NRW Research College Design of Flexible Working Environments at the interdisciplinary conference "Data Society. Opportunities – Innovations – Responsibility" on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the University of Paderborn. The results of the Research College will also be published promptly within an interdisciplinary book at Springer.

The past years have clearly shown us the limits of face-to-face teaching. We bridge distances with video conferences, but we are limited to two-dimensional screens. Interactions with machines and robots are not possible. Therefore, the Chair for Product Creation has developed a VR tool that enables learning and interaction with the laboratory equipment in virtual reality, independent of space.

Christian Oleff has passed his doctoral examination with excellence. He received his doctorate for the topic "Proactive management of requirement changes in developing complex technical systems" under Prof. Dr.-Ing. Iris Gräßler.

Requirement changes are a major source of project failures in product engineering. Proactive management of requirement changes yields the potential to handle such changes efficiently. Christian Oleff provides a systematic approach for proactive change management to assess and reduce the risk of a requirement change with appropriate effort in industrial application.

Congratulations!

On August 15, 2022, Deniz Özcan started as a research assistant at the Chair of Product Engineering and strengthens the area of Systems Engineering. We are looking forward to a great cooperation with Mr. Özcan, who brings industrial research and project experience in the field of Systems Engineering and strategic product planning.

We wish a good start!

From June 23 to 25, the Chair for Product Creation was guest at the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) on Helgoland as part of the first milestone meeting of the joint project BIKINI. BIKINI stands for "Bionics and Al for Sustainable lntegration in Product Development for Resource Efficient Lightweight Design". At the milestone meeting, the partners were able to show their results in presentations and workshops. For this purpose, the AWI provided premises at the Biological Institute Helgoland. Daniel Preuß, Christian Oleff and Tim Wittenborg presented and discussed the results in the fields of requirements development and sustainability. The project is part of the Lightweight Technology Transfer and is funded by the Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection (BMWK). Further information about the BIKINI project can be found on the project homepage: bikini-projekt.de

"3D printing up close - the influence of a future technology on our lives" is the title of the DMRC Mosaic as part of the “50 Mosaics” UPB anniversary celebration. Children and families were interactively introduced to 3D printing at various stations. The Chair of Product Creation was on site with two VR stations. Guests were able to view 3D printers not only up close, but right before their own eyes, down to the smallest detail, and virtually disassemble them into all their individual parts - and put them back together again at the touch of a button. The virtual lab tour of the Smart Automation Laboratory, including a cobot animation, was also a great success with the enthusiastic VR beginners. The discussion with our chair representative Tim Wittenborg went into greater detail during his speak "Working with a robot - learning in virtual space".

The Chair of Product Creation developed a modularization concept for the company Glass GmbH & Co. KG which enables a time- and cost-reduced configuration of mixing systems. With the developed system, sales representatives are able to generate a suitable mixing system for each customer out of 3,800 possible configurations, view it in a 3D model and automatically generate a technical drawing. Presentations at the Anuga FooDTec 2022 and IFFA 2022 trade fairs have already taken place successfully.

How can achievements from the field of artificial intelligence add value to product development? This question was discussed by leading professors in the field of product development of the WiGeP, including Prof. Dr.-Ing. Iris Gräßler from the Heinz Nixdorf Institute in Graz. The first impulse was given by Dr.-Ing. Jens Pottebaum with insights from projects on the application of language processing, machine learning and semantic technologies in requirements engineering (examples are ARCA, BIKINI und ImPaKT). After presentations from the chairs of Prof. Hick (TU Graz), Prof. Wartzack (FAU Erlangen-Nuremberg) and Prof. Stark (TU Berlin) and thematic workshops, Prof. Gräßler moderated the panel discussion focusing on requirements development. Potentials became particularly clear in the discussion with the leadership of AVL List GmbH – the world's largest independent company for development, simulation and testing of drive systems, especially in the automotive industry.

In order to get fit for the upcoming challenges, the product development team of the chair was on a retreat at the Traunsee in Austria during the first week of June. In addition to exciting industrial projects and challenging research topics, the focus of the retreat was on the targeted support of the ongoing PhD projects and, last but not least, the return to collaboration in presence. The convivial togetherness and the long-awaited personal exchange as well as the first swims at 15 degrees water temperature give strength for great common deeds. Thus, the product development team returns to the Heinz Nixdorf Institute freshly strengthened.

The research associates Henrik Thiele and Daniel Roesmann presented current research results of the Chair for Product Creation at the 15th VDI/VDE Mechatronics Conference. They provided contributions on “Controlling of the Modeling of Mechatronic Products” and “Human Tracking for the Identification of Mission Progress in Robot-Assisted Firefighting”. After last year's conference had to be held digitally, this year the TU Darmstadt invited participants to attend in person.

From the idea to the finished product, the "V-model" structures a methodical procedure. In an interview with VDI Nachrichten, Prof. Iris Gräßler reported on why the V-model plays such a special role in product creation. In 2021, the VDI Technical Committee chaired by Ms. Gräßler published the revised VDI 2206. (more)

On a sunny day in Paderborn, the ImPaKT consortium had the opportunity to visit the case example "CLAAS caterpillar drive" in front of the Heinz Nixdorf Forum. For this purpose, additionally to the members of the chair product creation, members of the Institute for Machine Elements and Systems Engineering of RWTH Aachen University, Prostep AG and CLAAS Industrietechnik GmbH came together. First, they inspected the caterpillar drive on an AXION 960 tractor (see picture). Afterwards, findings regarding the case example were captured by MBSE within a system model in our Smart Innovation Lab. The MBSE system model serves as an information basis for performing model-based impact analyses and evaluating technical changes, e.g., with regard to economic efficiency.

Milestone reached: The Chair of Product Development presented the first central project results for the "identification of promising application areas of existing technologies and core competencies" to H. Butting GmbH & Co. KG. On this basis, creative workshops on potential markets were held at the milestone meeting in Knesebeck. The company was impressed by the number and quality of the ideas. Their evaluation and elaboration will now be the focus of the next project phase.

The University of Paderborn founds the joint alliance "COLOURS" (COLlaborative innOvative sUstainable Regional univerSities) with seven european universities. The goal of the alliance is long-term, internationally visible cooperation in research and teaching. Approximately 120,000 students and almost 12,000 employees contribute to this. The Chair of Product Creation is involved in strategic planning in order to position the alliance in the best possible way with the help of future scenarios. In addition, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Iris Gräßler's group contributes to pilot projects under the broad heading of "sustainability".

More details in press release: Press release. 

Dominik Wiechel (in the picture on the right) is now in charge of the second development cycle of the collaborative research project ImPaKT. The ImPaKT project team aims to develop solutions for model-based impact analysis in an iterative manner with four cycles. Goal of the second cycle is to implement a functional software prototype as well as to develop systems models of the case studies. The lead of the development cycle is associated with the testing of initial research results on the basis of several industrial case studies: a crawler track system for agricultural machines from partner CLAAS Industrietechnik in cooperation with Eisengiesserei Baumgarte, a balancing machine from Hofmann Mess- und Auswuchttechnik and a charging plug from Hadi Plast Kunststoff-Verarbeitung. 

Moving an entire production facility is a mammoth task and requires careful planning. Organised by Philipp Hesse, doctoral student in the Chair for Product Creation, the company Hadi-Plast GmbH & Co. KG was able to test the benefits of new methods and tools in practice: Using virtual reality, employees were able to get a realistic picture of the new factory. In such cases, the chair offers the possibility to virtually walk through a new factory layout and conduct a design review. In this case, some potential for improvement was identified, which will now be taken into account in further planning. Another design review is being planned.

With the beginning of the new year Tim Wittenborg begins his work as research assistant at the chair of Product Creation on the 14th of February. In the Information and Production Management group he reinforces the field of “sustainable product creation”. Previously Tim Wittenborg worked as academic assistant for the DMRC before he headed for the AM industry to collect hands on experience as a software engineer. We are looking forward to a successful cooperation and wish him a good start!