In addition to adaptable systems, employees are a key success factor. This is shown by a study conducted by KIT, LUH and acatech.

Modern information and communication technology, such as sensor technology or data communication, links individual systems and globally distributed locations to form intelligent factories. Digitalization and the technical solutions of Industry 4.0 offer companies the opportunity to implement even the most individual customer requirements - within the price and time constraints of large-scale production.

"However, this new flexibility does not only bring advantages," says Gisela Lanza, Professor and Head of the wbk Institute of Production Engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). "A greater number of variants, shorter product life cycles and unsteady customer demand lead to unpredictable market changes to which companies have to react." In order to be successful and profitable in such a fluctuating environment, companies must adapt their production systems and networks to market conditions in the shortest possible time and at low cost.

However, the successful implementation of such adaptability does not only depend on the technical aspects of the systems, as Lanza explains: "A dynamic organization can only succeed if employees have the necessary expertise and flexibility. The willingness to respond to change is a key aspect of adaptability."

The wbk, the Institute of Production Systems and Logistics (IFA) at Leibniz Universität Hannover (LUH) and the German Academy of Science and Engineering acatech therefore want to use the joint study to show how companies can put people at the center of adaptable structures and how Industry 4.0 can support them in doing so. The basis for this was the close exchange of experience with representatives from industry, employers' and employees' associations, politics and science.

People at the center of adaptable structures
The study shows that employees make a decisive contribution to the successful implementation of adaptability: they stimulate and drive reactions to internal and external changes in production and its environment and "live" the change in organization and working conditions. "Employees can only quickly adapt to new areas of responsibility and make qualified decisions in every situation if they understand the relevant interrelationships in the system and recognize the benefits of change for themselves and their immediate working environment," says Peter Nyhuis, Professor and Director of the IFA.

Digital assistance systems can help to build a comprehensive understanding of the system: Industry 4.0 applications, such as virtual reality, make changes digitally tangible and easier to understand. It is important to increase trust in new systems: "Companies need to sharpen their focus on meaningful changes so that they can reduce employees' fears and concerns about new, previously unknown tasks."

Dynamic and modular company organization
However, adaptability does not only take place at employee level, organizational forms also change. However, the more complex factories or value creation networks are, the more time-consuming and costly it is to adapt them. One possible solution is to incorporate dynamic and modular structures into the company organization. Flexible organization and technology enable employees to plan and manage change.

Industry 4.0 applications can also provide support here. They make it possible to control individual areas of the factory or the entire network in a decentralized manner. Intelligent assistance systems can transparently show employees how changes will affect them. This contributes significantly to the efficiency of adaptability: "Implementing adaptability equally in all areas and at all levels would not be expedient, as the additional costs would be too high," says Gisela Lanza. "Instead, companies need to determine the extent to which each area should be made more adaptable."

These and other results as well as best practice examples are described in detail in the study "Adaptable, human-centered structures in Industry 4.0 factories and networks". "We want to support companies in finding areas where action is needed in their production facilities in order to successfully implement adaptability through technical, organizational and human design options," says Lanza. as