As hierarchies level off and decision making authority shifts to units related to production, mid-level industry executives are having to assume increasing responsibility in corporate decision making processes. The computerized educational environments and process simulations developed in this project offer executives realistic decision alternatives to control production processes. They can already analyze the medium and long-term effects of their decisions in just a few minutes and prepare further steps to optimize processes.

As an example, a foundry's production flow is simulated in different trend scenarios. The students are given the assignment of optimizing the foundry process by engineering parameters geared toward sustainability.
To this end, assignments have been formulated, which correspond to specific situations such as the loss of raw material suppliers or the delivery of substantial orders at short notice. According to the demands, students configure the simulated production process at the nexus of economics, ecology and social aspects. Once a defined number of work units have been run through, the results are put in a graphic format or exported to an Excel table.

Complex processes are experienced in the simulation environment in a didactically reduced form. Students develop the ability to recognize and control correlations between corporate units.


Contact:
 
Dr. Eberhard Blümel
Virtual Interactive Training
Tel.: +49 391 4090-110
Fax: +49 391 4090-115
Fraunhofer Institute for
Factory Operation and Automation IFF
Sandtorstr. 22
39106 Magdeburg