IMS Gear: self-organization in assembly in the agileASSEMBLY project

Starting point

IMS Gear is a manufacturer of gear and transmission technology headquartered in Donaueschingen. In the BMBF research consortium agileASSEMBLY, research and industry worked from 2023 to 2026 on agile shift planning and adaptable staff capacities in the late phases of product development. IMS Gear was an industrial partner in the consortium, as was Diehl Metering. As software partner, Hawk contributed the planning software.

In assembly in Villingen-Schwenningen, the teams already organized themselves, using an analog planning board with name tags. The goal was to support this self-organization digitally: employees were to be able to take on orders themselves, and the software was to check whether the prerequisites for this were met. At the same time, shift and area managers were to be relieved of some of their workload.

The task

The aim was a planning approach for assembly that does not assign work from the top down. It was to bring orders together with employees’ skills, use the data from existing systems and be so simple at the workstation that the teams would actually use it in their daily work.

Solution with Hawk IVO Plan

Hawk contributed Hawk IVO Plan (then getaiPlan) to the project as the software foundation. The planning software connected existing systems, including SAP and time and attendance, and translated production orders into qualification requirements.

For assembly, the getaiSpace interface, now part of Hawk IVO Plan, was used to create a digital planning board on a touchscreen in the production hall. Before the shift starts, employees log in, see the current orders and choose their own tasks. In the background, the software checks whether qualifications and availability match. The decision stays with people; managers take care of exceptions. A second area of this interface was used for disruption management.

In the video case study, Cedric Oette describes the approach as follows: “Es ist ein Miteinander.” (“It’s about working together.”)

Result

In assembly, a pilot group of 40 employees worked with the digital planning board instead of the analog board under real conditions. Fraunhofer IAO reports on this in its magazine FORWARD (issue 2/2025). The video case study cites self-organization within the team and planning based on skills instead of rigid patterns as results.

IMS Gear’s project “Agile, selbstorganisierte und bedarfsgerechte Personaleinsatzsteuerung in der Montage” (agile, self-organized and demand-driven management of workforce deployment in assembly) received an award in 2025 in the “Winner” category of the competition “100 Orte für Industrie 4.0” (100 Places for Industrie 4.0) run by the Allianz Industrie 4.0 Baden-Württemberg.

The concept and architecture have been published scientifically: in the paper “AI-Assisted Integrative Workforce and Capacity Management” for the AHFE 2025 conference, which Hawk co-authored.

For Hawk, the result was incorporated into its products. The digital planning board for teams at the workstation and the checking of qualification requirements for production orders are now part of Hawk IVO Plan. This case study does not report any measured figures on impact or effort. The research consortium ran until June 2026.

What we learned from the project is described in the article on the agileASSEMBLY research consortium. The knowledge article Self-organization on the shop floor describes how self-organization and planning can be combined in shift operations.

Video case study

The video “AI Workforce Management: Wenn die Technik dem Menschen eine echte Hilfe ist” (in German) was produced in close collaboration with IMS Gear. It still uses the former product names. You can find it in the news item Video case study: AI Workforce Management with IMS Gear.