Thinking Innovation Ahead – Joint Semantic Modelling for Integrated Product and Production at the Research Campus Arena2036

The goal of the Research Campus ARENA2036 is, based on excellent, interdisciplinary basic and applied research, to produce potentially disruptive and leap-frog innovations, to transfer them to industry, and thus to contribute to the active shaping of work, mobility, production of the future, and digitization. The seamless transfer of research results into industrial application is intended to increase the competitiveness of the business location Baden-Württemberg and to enable the creation of novel business models – especially for SMEs. An essential component here is the interdisciplinary and trans-institutional approach of various fields of science and application, which is reflected in the close cooperation of all actors under the umbrella of ARENA2036. Based on this basic idea, current research work is carried out in the field of data interoperability in the domains of product development, and production system design. The goal is to achieve a significant overall reduction of product development and market introduction times. This topic is particularly significant due to the currently ongoing transformation processes in the automotive industry, which question the prevailing product and production patterns and require an increasing flexibility of manufacturing processes. New product and production technologies have to be incorporated into serial production at ever shorter intervals, which poses great challenges for both product design and corresponding production systems.

This paper conceptually approaches the basic ideas in innovation design incorporated at the Research Campus ARENA2036 as a research platform that allows for joint research in a precompetitive environment thus enabling all partners to think innovation ahead. One example for this, is the holistic semantic modelling of integrated product and production development in the research projects Fluid Production and Digital Fingerprint. Both projects conceive an approach to production that emphasizes the need for constant flexibility qua anthropocentric reconfigurability.