App Development via Low-Code Programming as Part of Modern Industrial Engineering Education

The Industrial Engineering Laboratory at the Ostwestfalen-Lippe University of Applied Sciences and Arts researches the user-centered, customer-oriented and efficient design of work and production systems. Its research focuses on investigating different technologies from the context of digitalization in industrial production. Software used to digitally support work processes must be adapted specifically to work systems. It is difficult to take various user requirements into account in standard software. Therefore, IT experts must continuously adapt software in order to make it suitable for different applications. One possible alternative is for software applications to be designed by industrial engineering or users themselves. In low-code programming, in contrast to classic software development, it is possible to create software applications without extensive programming knowledge. In the laboratory, a teaching unit on app development using a low-code platform was designed. It was integrated into an existing teaching concept for industrial engineers, then evaluated using a questionnaire.