Why does a mechanical engineering company need a media workshop? And what does that have to do with the chemical industry?

"Media workshop" sounds at first like an offer from school days: A working group gets together to work on a media-related project after school.

That gets to the heart of a media workshop in a mechanical engineering company... and somehow it doesn't... because we're talking about adult employees of a company who are to be introduced to the topics of advancing technologies, digitalization as well as robotics during working hours.

It sounds simple at first, but it's not. After all, people are creatures of habit who are reluctant to leave familiar paths. The media workshop introduces production and administrative employees step by step to digital and virtual technologies and learning opportunities.

Garlock GmbH set up a media workshop some time ago as part of the project "Digital and virtual learning cultures in organizations in the production sector" as a cooperation partner of the d:v:lop research project in collaboration with the Cybernetics Lab IMA & IfU at RWTH Aachen University. The aim of the project was to strengthen the media competence of production employees and prepare them for a changing learning and working culture.

The Garlock Media Workshop has now been presented in the book "Digital Chemical Industry" (published in German language „Digitale Chemieindustrie“) as a pioneer use case for the chemical industry. Holger Hamann, Director Lean and Production at Garlock GmbH, together with Dr. Frank Hees, Prof. Dr. Ingrid Isenhardt and Dr. Nina Schiffler from RWTH Aachen University, Chair of Information Management in Mechanical Engineering (IMA), created this chapter for Wiley-VCH Verlag, a renowned specialist publisher whose program covers many areas of the natural sciences. The editor of the book is Prof. Dr. Carsten Suntrop.

The reference book "Digital Chemical Industry" is about the concept, objectives and design of the media workshop, the individual learning stations, use cases, lessons learned, and the derivation of recommendations and transfer potential for companies in the chemical industry.

In the media workshop concept, production employees go through five different stations that increase their media competence and knowledge management in several steps without overtaxing them. The training begins at the first station, the "Peer Learning Space," where knowledge is initially still exchanged in analog form. Then it continues with station 2, online knowledge management, via station 3, AR collaboration, to station 4, AR instruction, and finally the participants reach station 5, the VR environment.

The Garlock GmbH media workshop therefore proves to be a particularly good use case in the scientific reference book, as the media workshop was implemented centrally and within a manageable time frame with its own employees. Even after it was set up, the train-the-trainer concept applied here, enabling Garlock GmbH to have empowered responsible persons independently conduct the media seminars in the workshop. The mixing of the learning teams in the composition of the participants played a major role, as there is a strong networking of the work areas in the production hall of Garlock GmbH.

In the book "Digital Chemical Industry", the lessons learned on the implementation and benefits of media workshops are closely examined and the challenges in the digitization of work and qualification processes as well as the increase of media competence in the area of digitization and virtuality are intensively examined and explained.

The derivation of recommendations and transfer potentials for companies in the chemical industry is obvious, since the concept of media workshops can be realized regardless of the industry. Technical and application knowledge must be identified, communicated and passed on in all industries. The conclusion of the chapter "Corporate media workshops as enablers of the digital transformation" addresses the guidelines for the chemical industry and provides a concluding outlook.

As the media workshop at Garlock GmbH shows, a mechanical engineering company certainly needs a media workshop to introduce employees to the digital transformation in small steps. This is also a good example for other industries, such as the chemical industry, to prepare employees for changing processes and requirements.

Reference:

Digitale Chemieindustrie

Anforderungen Chemie 4.0, Praxisbeispiele und Perspektiven

Suntrop, Carsten (Herausgeber)

1. Auflage Oktober 2022

402 Seiten, Hardcover

150 Abbildungen

ISBN: 978-3-527-34971-5

Wiley-VCH, Weinheim