Industrial production in high-wage countries like Germany is still at risk. Yet, there are many counter-examples in which producing companies dominate their competitors by not only compensating for their specific disadvantages in terms of factor costs (e.g. wages, energy, duties and taxes) but rather by minimising waste using synchronising integrativity as well as by obtaining superior adaptivity on alternating conditions. In order to respond to the issue of economic sustainability of industrial production in high-wage countries, the leading production engineering and material research scientists of RWTH Aachen University together with renowned companies have established the Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries”. This compendium comprises the cluster’s scientific results as well as a selection of business and technology cases, in which these results have been successfully implemented into industrial practice in close cooperation with more than 30 companies of the industrial production sector.

Here, leading researchers in production and materials technology work together to address the problem of keeping production competitive and sustainable in high-wage countries. They describe both scientific results and practical industrial applications.

This contributed volume contains the research results of the Cluster of Excellence “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries”, funded by the German Research Society (DFG). The approach to the topic is genuinely interdisciplinary, covering insights from fields such as engineering, material sciences, economics and social sciences. The book contains coherent deterministic models for integrative product creation chains as well as harmonized cybernetic models of production systems. The content is structured into five sections: Integrative Production Technology, Individualized Production, Virtual Production Systems, Integrated Technologies, Self-Optimizing Production Systems and Collaboration Productivity.The target audience primarily comprises research experts and practitioners in the field of production engineering, but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.

Meeting the needs of the manufacturing and service sectors of contemporary industry, this volume is concerned with the human factors, ergonomics, and safety issues related to the design of products, processes, and systems, as well as the operation and management of business enterprises. This book will be of special value to researchers and practitioners involved in the design of products, processes, systems, and services, which are marketed and utilized by a variety of organizations around the world.

With contributions from an international group of authors with diverse backgrounds, this set comprises all fourteen volumes of the proceedings of the 4th AHFE Conference 21-25 July 2012. The set presents the latest research on current issues in Human Factors and Ergonomics. It draws from an international panel that examines cross-cultural differences, design issues, usability, road and rail transportation, aviation, modeling and simulation, and healthcare.

This edited volume contains the selected papers presented at the scientific board meeting of the German Cluster of Excellence on “Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries”, held in November 2014. The topical structure of the book is clustered in six sessions: Integrative Production Technology, Individualised Production, Virtual Production Systems, Integrated Technologies, Self-Optimising Production Systems and Human Factors in Production Technology. The Aachen perspective on a holistic theory of production is complemented by conference papers from external leading researchers in the fields of production, materials science and bordering disciplines. The target audience primarily comprises research experts and practitioners in the field but the book may also be beneficial for graduate students.