off introduction:

Digitisation is about to penetrate into the field of manufacturing. It is already foreseeable, that the future holds out a significantly stronger usage of digital information systems and a much higher automation level in manufacturing environments. But what are the prospects of these developments? Are digital innovations just an end in themselves or the logical step towards a better manufacturing future? And what does ‘better’ mean in this context?

The following text gives thought to these questions and finally comes to a conclusion describing which features manufacturing machines need to have in future if they are supposed to transfer the advantages that digital innovations deploy in the virtual world of information systems into the physical world of product manufacturing.