agileASSEMBLY research consortium

Background and objective

Assembly and commissioning sit at the end of a long chain of dependencies. A delayed order can change time windows, required skills and available capacity. agileASSEMBLY explored how companies could make these late stages of product development more adaptable. The officially confirmed project period runs from January 2023 to June 2026.

Partners and use cases

Research, industry and associations worked together in the BMBF-funded consortium. Fraunhofer IAO coordinated the project. The other research partners were the IAT at the University of Stuttgart and the WZL at RWTH Aachen. They were joined by companies from mechanical engineering and industry as application partners, and by social partners and associations as transfer partners.

Hawk worked closely with two industrial partners in the project:

• IMS Gear, a manufacturer of gear and transmission technology: self-organization in assembly with a digital planning board.
• Diehl Metering, a manufacturer of smart metering solutions: more flexible staffing with IT-supported solutions that employees use themselves.

Hawk’s contribution

Hawk was a software partner in the consortium and contributed its planning platform, then called getaiPlan and getaiSpace, now combined in Hawk IVO Plan. Together with the industrial and research partners, we worked on agile shift planning and adaptable staff capacities: the software checks demand, qualifications and rules in the background, and the decision stays with people.

What came of the project

• Tested in practice: At IMS Gear in Villingen-Schwenningen, a pilot group of 40 employees in assembly worked with a digital planning board instead of the analog board. Fraunhofer IAO reports on this in its magazine FORWARD (issue 2/2025).
• Recognized: 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.
• Published: The concept and architecture of AI-supported workforce and capacity planning are described in the paper “AI-Assisted Integrative Workforce and Capacity Management” for the AHFE 2025 conference, which Hawk co-authored.
• In the product: 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.
• Openly accessible: The consortium publishes its results on the project website, including a study on the adaptability of manufacturing companies and the collection of methods “Wandlungsassistent”.

What we learned

1. Where teams already organize themselves, the existing process is the best foundation. We digitize it instead of reinventing it.
2. Good proposals require clean data on qualifications and on the requirements of the orders.
3. Clear roles make it work: employees choose, the software checks rules and qualifications, managers take care of exceptions.
4. Where a great many rules apply, a hybrid model works: stable base shifts with a clearly defined flexible share.
5. Employees, the works council, HR and IT should be involved from the outset, and the use case is refined step by step.

Questions for your own planning

• Which planning decision needs support, and who is responsible for it?
• Which requirements, skills and operational rules must be considered together?
• How are employees involved and proposals evaluated in everyday work?

The linked original sources document the research project and its publications. The article Self-organization on the shop floor describes how you can combine self-organization and planning in your own shift operations.