The digitalisation of production today makes it possible to produce even individual products – for example personalised potted plants – in series. Interested parties can experience what this looks like in practice until 6 October at the Federal Garden Show (BUGA) in Heilbronn. In a joint project of the Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg (DHBW) in Mosbach and the Hochschule Heilbronn (HHN), students planned and implemented an industry 4.0 scenario and visualised the process with WEBfactory, among other things.
In order to be able to watch live how a machine produces its personal BUGA souvenir, visitors first have to define some product features on a tablet. Once the guest has selected the flower colour, a picture for the plant pot and entered an individual inscription, the system starts moving: The machine places an empty flower pot under a dosing unit, where it is filled with soil. In the next step, a robot inserts the desired seed variety and covers the seed with soil. Finally, the pot is printed at a printing station with the picture and the short text – for example “For Grandma”. Four minutes later, the visitor holds his personalised souvenir in his hands. The digitally controlled process fulfils the project requirement to produce the batch size one (i.e. special productions) in series.
