Participation in the 4th Steinbeis Engineering Day 2017

On April 5, 2017, the 4th Stein­beis Engi­neer­ing Day took place in the Haus der Wirtschaft in Stuttgart, under the mot­to; “Dig­i­ti­za­tion, net­work­ing, val­ue cre­ation: Just Test (bed) IT”. Numer­ous inno­va­tions were pre­sent­ed, which enable the suc­cess­ful­ly devel­op­ment of val­ue cre­ation in the age of Indus­try 4.0.

The so-called Test­bed is about pro­vid­ing com­pa­nies from dif­fer­ent indus­tries with a plat­form in which they can col­lab­o­rate exper­i­men­tal­ly in a nov­el way. This is done in the con­text of dig­i­tal­iza­tion and net­work­ing, i.e. Indus­try 4.0 and the indus­tri­al Inter­net. These Test­beds cre­ate added val­ue and new prod­ucts and ser­vices.

On this basis, Stein­beis has devel­oped a for­mat for small and medi­um-sized enter­pris­es, which is aimed specif­i­cal­ly at com­pa­nies in the area of com­merce, crafts and man­u­fac­tur­ing. These “micro Test­bebs” enable the par­tic­i­pants to imple­ment and test the dig­i­ti­za­tion step by step on a part­ner­ship basis.

How­ev­er, at the 4th Stein­beis Engi­neer­ing Day, the focus was not only on how these micro Test­beds are suc­cess­ful­ly imple­ment­ed in prac­tice, it was also about get­ting to know select­ed prac­ti­cal exam­ples and expe­ri­enc­ing them live.

We at the Stein­beis Con­sult­ing Cen­ter Inter­cul­tur­al Acad­e­my have had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce our­selves as a part­ner in many inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions, who does not only dri­ve tech­no­log­i­cal change, but the process-relat­ed change — per­son­nel. It must not be for­got­ten that with all the pos­si­bil­i­ties offered by the Indus­tri­al Inter­net and dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, employ­ees must be empow­ered to accom­pa­ny the changes. At the same time, com­pa­nies face great oppor­tu­ni­ties that sup­port their busi­ness mod­el, but which can also jeop­ar­dize it. We at the Stein­beis Con­sult­ing Cen­ter Inter­cul­tur­al Acad­e­my strong­ly believe that dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion must be firm­ly linked to change man­age­ment.

A first approach to this is the sem­i­nar, “Addi­tive Man­u­fac­tur­ing for Exec­u­tives” which we offer togeth­er with Stein­beis IMAPS. This sem­i­nar is the first joint sem­i­nar in which the new tech­nolo­gies are linked to the require­ments for change man­age­ment.

We are look­ing for­ward to what Indus­try 4.0 will bring, and we are deter­mined to con­tribute to this devel­op­ment through a suc­cess­ful change man­age­ment.