Sustainable Change
Key areas: Software architectures, security, critical infrastructures, indicators, behaviour patterns
The transformation of complexity into productivity
The new technological offerings in industry and trade are creating an increasingly complex technological landscape. In order to be able to react to this, companies in the industrial sector and institutions in the public sector must constantly reinvent their processes, strategies and infrastructures using digital technologies. Networking and adaptivity are an important basis for this. The ability of socio-technical systems to adapt and optimize themselves independently is the starting point for the work of the research group "Adaptability". In particular, it focuses on the domains of information systems, processes, critical infrastructures, strategies and learning factories.
Adaptability of systems
Adaptability describes the ability of a system to respond quickly, efficiently and proactively to changes in its environment through the targeted use of action structures. The system has to recognize a potential need for change and generate reactive measures. It is the goal of our research group to demonstrate the advantages of adaptable system design, to develop concrete design options and to implement them in practice.
An indicator system for socio-technical systems
But how is adaptability measured in a socio-technical system? A possible answer is provided by an indicator system developed at the chair: Based on the identification of relevant indicators of adaptability, ten indicators were determined and their applicability demonstrated by means of case studies. By means of learning factories, the developed indicator system can be used as a tool for system analysis as well as for explaining adaptability. It not only enables the analysis of the current state of organisations, but also compares and evaluates different system states and system developments. The success of design measures to increase the adaptability of a system is thus quantifiable.
Customer orientation in production
In order to be able to react quickly and efficiently to changing customer requirements and conditions, the underlying business processes must be designed to be adaptable. Together with partners from the practice, we research the adaptable design of internal as well as cross-location and cross-company software development processes.
Adaptive protection structures and disaster impact assessment in critical infrastructures
How do operators of critical infrastructures, authorities and aid organisations act in an emergency and how can the interaction in civil protection be improved? Against the background of severe environmental turbulence, adaptability is particularly relevant. Critical infrastructures must be enabled to react adequately to emergencies and to maintain their functionality to a large extent, as well as to avoid endangering society. In close cooperation with our project partners, we investigate designed process models for impact assessment as well as developed methods for analysing the adaptability of critical infrastructures.