Mr. Rothenberger, why do you want to avoid the term "assistance system" in relation to your own Utility Film development?
The term is too broad for me and ultimately does not describe the quality of solutions that we have been offering workers and fitters at store floor level for years. Even the anti-lock braking system or cruise control in a car count as assistance systems. (...) Even though all these solutions definitely have their benefits, they mean that people have to think less during their work. We at memex, on the other hand, go a few steps further with our development - on a didactic level.

That sounds like school lessons at first. What exactly do you mean by that?
With the Utility Film, we not only offer employees on the store floor a digital work instruction for their daily assembly work, but also an accompanying qualification and knowledge platform. This means that when an employee joins the company on their first day, the memex platform provides them with the knowledge they need to comfortably perform their specific tasks. Our digital work instructions accompany the employee virtually from the instructive induction on their first day through to all future fields of activity. In this way, they can learn additional skills through memex and gradually expand their qualifications. We therefore do not like to talk about "training", as complementary providers might do. We do not create trainees, but qualified employees.

How do you react to current trends? On the one hand, there is the digital transformation, where data is sometimes referred to as the gold of the new century. On the other hand, there is New Work, a topic that has now even reached the store floor.Dothese things also play a role in your current development?
Our solution quality is essentially based on three pillars: Documenting, instructing, qualifying. Documenting means that we secure knowledge at store floor level. This point is currently also very important to our customers. The utility film can also be created much faster and more conveniently than, for example, a text and image instruction - and yet it is more meaningful. This is a very strong unique selling point compared to complementary providers.

And of course, an increasingly agile working environment also means that the deployment of workers is becoming more flexible. We support this change - for example, if an employee is on parental leave for three months, their process knowledge is well preserved on the memex platform and can be easily accessed by others.

If we follow this example, it brings us to "instructing": We provide the employee with well-founded work instructions that instruct them to do something successfully and without error the first time.

For us, on the other hand, "qualification" means that the employee practises several times with our guidance until they can carry out the process independently without digital worker guidance. In future, this will go so far that our system will also be able to store what the employees have learned so that a comparison can be made between what needs to be learned and what the employee has actually learned to date.

What do you think about the use of VR glasses or augmented reality in your field?
We mainly serve medium-sized customers who expect solutions that can be implemented quickly at a manageable price. We are happy to give them this security. At the moment, trade fair stands and showcases can hardly do without data glasses - but the reality in medium-sized companies is often different. Many companies still do not work with screens at store floor level. This means that employees still pick up their orders in paper form from the foreman in the morning. Therefore, a very important statement from our side: Everything we show at our events, in videos or on our website are not just things that can be discussed and could be like this at some point, but are concrete optimizations that are already being used successfully by our customers.

So moving away from the workbook?
Yes, we are making digitalization practicable for SMEs. What is discussed today can be implemented tomorrow. Utility films can be implemented immediately and independently. The creation and implementation effort is far less than with other systems. In addition, our work instructions change the work and qualification situation of employees in the long term by massively shortening the training period and communicating standards uniformly. We also ensure that general acceptance of digital induction increases rapidly. For example, language barriers are reduced by our solutions.

Are digital work instructions such as Utility Film suitable for SMEs?
Definitely yes. Assembly workstations can be found everywhere. But for many companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, it is sometimes still difficult to find out what potential lies behind which solution and in which area they can best use these systems.

How can a medium-sized manufacturing company be convinced of this?
In my opinion, the term "assistance system" is only appropriate if it serves people and they can derive positive value from it for their daily work. The fundamental question we ask ourselves at memex is therefore: do our developments serve to make work healthier and more effective? And that is what we try to convey to SMEs.

And where do you see digital assistance systems in the future?
In this context, I only want to talk about our own solutions, which we are consistently developing further. For example, we see great potential for the future in the areas of visualization and networking. Our joint study with the Fraunhofer IAO provides an up-to-date picture of the current state of development and reflects the current trends in digital assistance systems in the production environment.