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MSc Engineering Management - Welcome to the TU Wien Pilot factory Industry 4.0

A virtual tour through the pilot factory of the TU Wien

[Translate to English:] Pilotfabrik

The Pilot Factory Industry 4.0 is an ambitious project by TU Wien. It reflects a typical manufacturing environment where small and medium scale companies can test their products and processes. It is also a platform for research education and integrates learning, experimenting, and demonstration of production at one place. By utilizing correct technologies, this project helps shape how the industry of tomorrow is going to be.

On 20.07.2021 the participants of the MSc program in Engineering Management of the TU Wien Academy for Continuing Education got the opportunity to receive an online lecture and a virtual tour of the Pilot Factory. The session was conducted by Dr. Claudia Schickling, the manager of the Pilot Factory. The participants got an insight of how this Factory integrates a manufacturing process: The use of sensors within the process for data collection and process improvements, simulation as a visualization and planning tool, robotics as a tool for efficiency and collaboration with humans.

 

The Pilot Factory helps to understand the generation of scientific knowledge for future production techniques and how this knowledge will benefit companies and the economy in general. For the use in higher technical education, this undertaking has created an environment like real production where students can interact and investigate with the aim of coming with solutions to improve production processes. The interaction and collaboration with companies helps students to understand the needs of industry today and in the future, investigating the current situations that affect production and processes of these companies helps to generate new ideas that can be implemented within the environment in a sustainable and innovative way by applying industry 4.0 technologies. Many thanks to Claudia Schickling for giving us this valuable introduction to this Pilot Factory.

A report by Carolina Castellanos (Colombia), Ronald D'Souza (Austria)