The APPsist project gives manufacturing companies the opportunity to get prepared for the challenges of industry 4.0 using CPS-integrated, intelligent assistance systems. The forms of production, maintenance and distribution will change with the integration of the internet of things, services and data in the same way as added value, business models, services and work organization will have to face transformation. This requires a sociotechnical design perspective through which collaborative work organisation, advanced training as well as technological and software architecture are created in order to enable intelligent, cooperative, self-organised interactions between employees and technical operating systems along the added value chain and make them transparent. The APPsist project creates, validates and exploits an approach to meet these challenges.