The Process Living Lab (PLL) is dedicated to employing digital technologies to analyze and optimize business processes within SMEs. Located at the International SEPT Competence Center, Leipzig University, our lab specializes in integrating various data collection and analysis technologies.
About
At the PLL, we integrate academic research with practical applications to enhance business process optimization, resource efficiency, and competitiveness for SMEs and startups. Our mission is to empower businesses to overcome productivity challenges like labor shortages and operational inefficiencies through innovative digital tools. These tools analyze:
- Workflow patterns
- Employee ergonomics
- Equipment usage and allocation
- User and customer experiences
By utilizing state-of-the-art technologies, the PLL tackles complex industry challenges and fosters strong collaboration between academia and industry.
Focus
Our methodology employs advanced digital technologies to unlock new process optimization possibilities for SMEs and startups. By using these tools, we offer businesses actionable insights to boost their efficiency, productivity, and innovation.
Our methodological framework consists of:
- Identification: Defining and understanding problems within processes, selecting suitable data collection technologies, and gathering necessary data.
- Analysis: Processing and integrating various datasets to produce meaningful information and perform root cause analysis.
- Solution Development: Creating solutions to enhance efficiency, usability, and performance of the processes.
At PLL, we offer customized solutions designed to improve customer experience and operational efficiency through innovative methodologies. Our offerings include:
- UX/UI Diagnosis: We focus on analyzing user interactions using data-driven approaches, including eye tracking and facial expression recognition technologies. By studying customer and user behaviors, we refine product designs and interfaces, both virtual and physical retail environments, enhancing the overall customer journey. This optimization helps businesses tailor their offerings to meet specific customer needs, ensuring alignment with user expectations and enhancing satisfaction.
- Process Optimization: For SMEs seeking to enhance efficiency, our service employs advanced digital tools to scrutinize workflows, movement patterns, and tool usage, identifying areas for improvement. We integrate data analysis with actionable insights to streamline operations, reduce inefficiencies, and effectively allocate resources. Our approach is designed to foster more flexible and effective processes for long-term business success.
- Process Design and Simulation: The lab provides comprehensive support for startups and SMEs in designing and prototyping effective processes. Leveraging methodologies that combine simulation tools, interactive exercises, and innovative approaches such as LEGO modeling, digital process mapping, VR simulation, we facilitate collaborative workshops to conceptualize and refine processes based on their business models.
Our Certified Industrial Change Agent Training is designed to empower professionals with tools and methodologies in innovation management, process improvement, and Lean Manufacturing principles. In this training, the participants will gain hands-on experience applying proven strategies to enhance efficiency and foster innovation in both production and service-oriented processes.
Technologies and Tools
Innovative solutions require the right tools, and our lab integrates various technologies to bridge the gap between theory and practical application. Whether in manufacturing, service design, or customer interaction, these technologies empower businesses to enhance their efficiency via data-driven decision-making approach.
Motion tracking sensors capture detailed movement data within workspaces, tracking worker activity, location, and hand positioning. They provide critical insights into how tasks are performed across different workstations. By analyzing movements - whether handling objects or working at various heights - these sensors pinpoint inefficiencies and recommend enhancements.
They also monitor the use of tools, equipment, and transport vehicles like forklifts and trolleys, providing data on usage patterns and spatial interactions. This information helps businesses optimize workflow dynamics, layout, and resource allocation.
Process Simulation allows businesses to use digital models to test and refine operations without costly disruptions. Companies can adjust process configurations, layout designs, and workflows to enhance efficiency and productivity.
Our Virtual reality simulation software offers a immersive experience, helping visualize potential improvements, identify inefficiencies, and optimize processes before implementation.
Facial expression recognition technology analyzes facial expressions to capture emotions and reactions that might not be expressed verbally, providing a deeper view of user engagement with products, services, or marketing efforts. Employing cameras or laptop webcams, coupled with advanced algorithms, this technology interprets seven key facial expressions.
This allows businesses to measure emotional responses to specific stimuli, vital for refining user interface design, product development, and customer service strategies.
Eye tracking technology offers crucial insights into how individuals interact with products, interfaces, or marketing materials by monitoring their eye movements and gaze patterns. This method determines where and for how long individuals focus their attention, uncovering unconscious biases, decision-making processes, and key areas of interest.
In sectors dedicated to enhancing user experience, eye tracking is essential for optimizing product design, website or interfaces layouts, and advertising strategies.
Projects
The Prozess-Werkstatt aims to follow-up the advancements made during Biodata-Prozess project and support process optimization in the craft sector by applying various digital tools such as tracking sensors, eye-tracking, cameras, AI based video analysis software, Virtual Reality simulation solutions to analyse and optimize processes.
The ultimate goal of the project is establishing a workshop space (Process Maker Space) in Riesa and Leipzig which offers process optimization services to SMEs. The Prozess Werkstatt project is part of the „WIR! – Wandel durch Innovation in der Region“ project, financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in Germany, between 2023 and 2025.
This project, funded by the DAAD, promotes the development of Living Labs in the field of logistic processes in Ghana and Tunisia. Collaborating with universities and SMEs, the project focuses on optimizing logistical processes to enhance regional development. A key highlight of this initiative is the hackathon, where interdisciplinary teams of students from Tunisia, Ghana, and Leipzig address challenges faced SMES on this countries.
Through these efforts, participants develop practical solutions while advancing University Business Linkages in Africa, particularly with ENET’COM in Tunisia and KNUST in Ghana. This project was funded the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) between 2022 and 2025.
The BioData-Prozess project aims to support process optimization in the craft sector, offering a concept and biometric data collection tools in the craft sector. In this project a concept for digital biometric data collection and analysis tools was developed and tested in in two craft companies in Saxony.
Finally, a concept for digital data collection and analysis in the craft sector was developed. The project was part of the „WIR! – Wandel durch Innovation in der Region“ project, financed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in Germany, between 2021 and 2022.
The project aims to bundle forces and know-how in the field of Lean Six Sigma, Innovation Management and Change Management among the industrial and HEI project partners in Germany and Tunisia to improve and optimize given resources by building up state-of-the-art capabilities and sustainable cooperation structures that allow implementation of countermeasures to the current skill mismatch development.
This project was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) between 2019 and 2022.
We actively encourage students to conduct projects that effectively bridge theory with practice. Some of our completed student projects are:
Master Thesis:
- Integrating Customer Feedback with Digital Process Analysis Tools – Case Study of El Salvadorian SMEs (by Cristina Alejandra Barahona Cabrera)
- Developing a Process Design Methodology for Early-Stage Start-ups: An Action Research Approach (by Kevin Andres Garzon Lopez)
- Exploratory Study on the Use of Digital Videorecording Tools for the Optimization of Operational Processes in Low-Tech Colombian SMEs (by Hugo Marlon Arenas Dominguez)
Students Assignment:
- Optimizing customer journeys in an online e-commerce platform via Eye-tracking & Facial Recognition
- Creating eye-tracking educational video for clients of a surgery simulation firm
- Website prototype optimization via Eye-tracking
- Development of digital twin concept for document management and archiving via RPA
- Development of a digital concept and prototype to optimize picking process in a warehouse
- Development of concept and prototype of data collection and analysis system to monitor poultry farms processes
- Development of concept and prototype to optimize delivery system via real-time tracking, routing optimization, agile communication, and flexible scheduling