Dear Readers, We are pleased to present to you the second issue of UdZ this year. In this issue, we would like provide you with important news from FIR and present new developments and projects. And we start with a bang in the best, most positive sense – by announcing our new FIR Navigator, which has been available for you since the beginning of May. Knowledge transfer of all kinds has always been a matter close to our hearts, but the FIR Navigator takes our transfer activities to a completely new level. It gives you the opportunity to search the entire FIR service portfolio for trending topics – categorized according to eight key drivers of transformation. With just one click, you can filter FIR’s key topics according to your interests or most urgent requirements. Please visit the website fir-navigator.fir.de and try out this new service offering! Do you remember what you were doing on this year on May 4? It was no ordinary day, because it marked the point in time when our ecological footprint exceeded the available biocapacity available in Germany for the rest of the year. In short, for the remainder of 2022 we will be living and working at an ecological deficit, at the expense of one or even twomore “planets Earth” that are not available to us. The consequences are already evident worldwide and, as a result, sustainability has now become a key issue for politics, business, and society. Consequently, our lead article on Green Services (starting on p. 8) addressed the topic of sustainability. It is an important and increasingly urgent topic that does not only affect companies in all sectors, but also our private lives. The faster and more urgently we seek to develop intelligent solutions, the more realistic it is that we will be able to maintain our prosperity with the resources at our disposal and be prepared for further challenges. That is why we will continue to work intensively on this important issue. Industrial Sustainability was also the focus of this year’s Business Transformation Summit on May 11 (starting on p. 30). The digital event was all about making the sustainability transformation tangible and outliningwhat companies need to do to implement sustainability principleswisely and effectively. Of course, in this second edition of UdZ, we will also present our research initiatives on other topics. We are particularly proud to announce that the 5G.NRW Competence Center research project has been extended through to the end of May 2025. The 5G.NRW Competence Center will serve as a key driver in North Rhine-Westphalia’s development into a 5G lead market. The continuation of the project illustrates the relevance of the 5G key technology in industry and honors the project consortium for its important work in the first project phase. On May 9, all project partners gathered in person at the Smart Logistics Cluster on RWTH Aachen Campus, where Professor Andreas Pinkwart, Minister for Economic Affairs, Innovation, Digitalization and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, presented the official renewal certificate to the project team (see p. 23). In the “Chatbots in Service” project (from p. 52), a catalog of measures was developed to support companies in the introduction of chatbots. The catalog helps to overcome barriers to implementation and paves the way for a successful integration of the new technology. After all, chatbots can be used to establish round-the-clock service for employees and customers, thus increasing their satisfaction and reducing costs at the same time. An overview and further information about our projects can be found at forschungsprojekte.fir.de/en. There have been new developments at FIR as well: MaxFerdinand Stroh was appointed as head of the Department of Information Management at the beginning of the year. In an interviewwith the UdZ editorial team, he traces the challenges and opportunities he has faced and provides us with insights into Digital Architecture Management, a key topic that he wants to further advance here at FIR (starting on p. 46). This topic is also covered in greater depth in an article titled “The Game Changer for the Production of Tomorrow” (starting on p. 14): Event-driven architecture (EDA) is characterized by a rethinking of the communication between systems. Instead of traditional 1:1 interfaces between two systems, which exchange their commands, requests, and responses via specific protocols and data formats, in an EDA, status changes (“events”) are exchanged in a centralized manner. With the present issue, we hope to be successful in sharing with you some of the motivation and energy that drives our work. Let’s look forward to developing our ideas and tackling the tasks of tomorrow! We wish you an enjoyable summer. Do you have any questions or suggestions about our magazine or would you like more information? Then please send us an email: redaktion@fir.rwth-aachen.de Learn even more about the FIR & visit us on our website at: » fir.rwth-aachen.de Or sign up for one of our FIR newsletters: » newsletter-anmeldung.fir.de
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