16.04.2005 | Awards

Award for Faculty of Production Management

Two-time winner of the PDM-productive competition at the Hannover Fair

The educational project ViEECO and a student project with the company Walter Dittel under the direction of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Augustin of the Faculty of Production Management, Reutlingen University, were awarded first places in two of the four categories in the PDM-productive competition by the German Engineering Federation VDMA at the Hanover Fair. This award underscores the highly advanced state of development with simultaneous practical relevance in the research area of product data management (PDM) and collaboration in virtual engineering teams at the faculty of Production Management, which uses PTC products as a technological platform.

The research group Product Data Management and Collaboration in Virtual Engineering Teams headed by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Augustin at the Faculty of Production Management of Reutlingen University is specialised in the design of development and engineering processes in factory planning and the use of modern information and communication technologies for collaboration in virtual teams, i. e. teams that work separately in space and time. The focus is on research work in cooperation with other universities and training in the Virtual Engineering and Education Company (ViEECO), which has two goals: On the one hand, it is a virtual company in which students work on tasks in the main research areas within the framework of industrial project cooperation with companies. In this context, the project with the company Walter Dittel, Landsberg, which was awarded first place in the category PDM concepts at the PDM-productive competition, was also worked on. On the other hand, ViEECO integrates two business games for virtual cooperation in the field of factory and warehouse planning. Here the students have to work in spatially distributed teams with other university students together. Within four days they have to work on and present a complex task, and all of this with modern information and communication technology, since a face-to-face meeting is not possible. This project was awarded the University Development Prize in the PDM-productive competition in the category Universities.

"In addition to this award, we are very proud that we have already been able to win several industry sponsors for the research and teaching area," says Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Augustin, who can already count well-known companies such as PTC, which provides the technological platform for the business games with its ProjectLink and Windchill software, Festo, Hewlett Packard, viastore, the Steinbeis Transfer Center Process Management in Product Development, Production and Logistics, CoCreate and strategic enterprise among his sponsors. "Since the time is more than ripe for the topic of PDM, also for medium-sized companies, we hope for further tasks which we can work on together with companies in student projects", says Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Augustin.