ProWandel - Planning process of the socio-technical adaptability in factories

The increasing dynamics and turbulence of the environment is forcing manufacturing companies to continually adapt their factories to changing requirements. A pronounced capacity for change enables companies to meet these multidimensional challenges.

However, existing concepts for the ability to change factory planning are primarily focused on technological aspects. However, since a factory is a complex socio-technical system, these approaches fall short of the mark: although technological prerequisites for change are built up, the employees and the organization are often unable to support, process or support this change.

The central research question is therefore how it is possible to empower both employees and the organization for change. To this end, a planning process is being developed that takes into account the specific requirements for employee skills as well as the work and company organisation. In addition, the interdependencies and interactions between employee competence and the organization are examined and integrated into the planning process. Finally, we analyse how the resulting recommendations can be implemented through a spatial and structural design of the factory.