Digitalization has become an integral part of today's society and economy. It is relevant for large corporations as well as medium-sized businesses. It is an integral part of many political agendas and is noticeable even in everyone's leisure time.
The IDW/IDT focuses on three application areas of digitalization: Industry & Commerce, Life & Leisure and Social Work & Healthcare. Through this focus, the most important effects of digitalization on society and the world of work are considered by the IDW/IDT.
The Industry & Commerce area deals with the effects of digitalization on industrial processes such as development process, purchasing process, production process and after-sale services. In addition to improving existing processes, completely new business processes that have only been made possible by ongoing digitalization are being researched. New types of business models are also being examined, and mechanisms of the internet economy are being transferred to traditional business models. Automation and the use of sophisticated machine learning algorithms paired with new technologies on the hardware side, for example using IoT devices, or on the software side, for example using blockchain applications, are the core of research in the Industry & Commerce area.
The Life & Leisure area focuses on smart environments such as the smart home and smart cities as well as on tourism use cases of digitalization. Machine learning algorithms are used to create tourism recommendation platforms, provide predictions and explanations of customer behaviour or extract information from huge amounts of data. Digitalization also offers room for new types of business models in this area. E-mobility can be mentioned here as an example. A special focus in this area is on the ethical aspect of digitalization. The world of work is changing and new technologies should not simply be adopted without a critical examination. Instead, their effects on the world of work and the way people live together have to be examined, and the question of the sustainability and usefulness of the technologies cannot be ignored.
The area of Social Work & Health Care deals, among other things, with the application of machine learning methods for diagnostics, virtual assistants for the automation of workflows in treatment and care, and the use of care robotics.
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Broschüre Institut für digitalen Wandel
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The IDW/IDT covers the most important technologies and methods of digitalization. The following list shows an overview of the different areas.
The area of business intelligence and machine learning includes finding non-trivial patterns and facts in large data sets or big data with the help of special algorithms. Data management techniques such as data warehouses are also considered.
In the Internet of Things area, intelligent objects are considered that are connected to the Internet on the one hand and to each other (M2M) on the other hand in order to achieve autonomous communication. Equipped with various sensors and their own connection to the Internet, these objects can autonomously fulfill certain application scenarios without human intervention.
Cloud computing is a model that provides users over a network, such as the Internet, with access to a shared pool of electronic processing resources such as computing power, storage space or applications. Cloud computing resources can be provided quickly and with minimal administrative effort. Well-known models of cloud computing are Software as a Service, Platform as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service.
The automation area includes techniques and process models for the automation of repeatable workflows. This ranges from factory automation to virtual booking assistants to assistants in the field of care and treatment. In order to achieve such automation, this area is focusing intensively on sensor technology and sensor networks with exploitation of real-time data, motion detection, human-robot interaction, and machine vision.
Ongoing digitalization is not only creating new opportunities on the technical side, but is also harboring previously untapped potential on the side of controlling business processes. In areas such as purchasing, logistics, and after-sales services, the IDW/IDT is researching possible applications of digitalization.
In addition to new technologies and processes, digitalization also enables entirely new business models and at the same time requires a critical examination of existing models.
The interdisciplinary areas of digital design, systems engineering, IT security, and ethics of digitalization serve as a substructure for all of the mentioned application areas and support them.
The interdisciplinary topic of digital design at the IDW includes the topics of interface design, user-centered design, and usability.
The interdisciplinary area of systems engineering includes agile development methods, component-based development, and is also dealing with the development of new process models for digital solutions.
IT security is a key area of digitalization. It covers technical topics such as cyber-physical security, embedded systems security, computer/hardware/software/network security and data security. In addition, it covers ethical and legal issues related to data protection.
One of the IDW/IDT's key topics is the ethical debate on the impact of digitalization on society and the economy. Digitalization is changing economic systems and workplaces and requires a critical examination of possible consequences for the way people live together and their role in the world of work. In addition, legislative changes or even new laws will be necessary in many areas.
Ethical aspects are dealt with in all IDW research groups and are closely coordinated with the ethics officer of the university senate (Prof. Dr. Olaf Kern). The establishment of a university-wide ethics committee is planned.
| Opening hours | Consulting hours on appointment |
|---|---|
| Phone | |
| idw@rwu.de | |
| Room | E 101 |
| On campus |
Gebäude E
Leibnizstr. 15
88250 Weingarten |
| Postal address |
RWU Hochschule Ravensburg-Weingarten University of Applied Sciences Institute for Digital Transformation Postfach 30 22 D 88216 Weingarten |
