Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionsanlagen und Konstruktionstechnik IPK

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  • Publication
    Strategy development based on intangibles in SMEs - an integrated approach
    ( 2013)
    Will, Markus
    ;
    Mertins, Kai
    The approach in this paper is based on the principles of action research and rapid prototyping. The paper shows the current status of a 'bottom-up' research process dedicated to continuously developing and improving management instruments that suit the requirements of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs): pragmatic, easy-to-use and generating direct practical benefit. As a result, this paper links the concept of intangibles to the practical strategy development process in SMEs. The integration shown concerns several challenges: (1) Integrate the internal and external perspective on intangibles, and, by that, link the concept of intellectual capital (IC) as a resource-based view with the concept of customer value as a market-based view. (2) Integrate the theoretical concept of IC with a methodology for comprehensive strategy development. (3) Integrate the formulation and implementation of business strategies taking into account the actual practice in SMEs.
  • Publication
    Wissensstandort Deutschland
    ( 2012)
    Mertins, Kai
    ;
    Steinhöfel, Erik
    ;
    Wuscher, Sven
    ;
    Will, Markus
  • Publication
    Towards information customization and interoperability in food chains
    ( 2012)
    Mertins, Kai
    ;
    Jäkel, Frank-Walter
    ;
    Deng, Qu
    Food supply chain networks are characterized by clouds of various partners providing required products or services to meet customer demands. The coordination of the SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprise) is a major challenge that food chain networks are facing. Delivering the right information to partners and providing semantic interoperability play key roles in effective coordination. This paper proposes an efficient framework to help these SMEs to easily negotiate and shape the profiles of the traceability information products. It tries to involve various tools to model the contexts of SMEs, and then adopt the concepts of mass customization to suggest optimal profiles for the desired information. In supply chain level, agents and governance boarders are supposed to negotiate and determ ine the profiles of needed information products. The customized information profiles are then employed to map and integrate various information sources to produce the required information products.
  • Publication
    Positioning of interoperability in food chain
    ( 2012)
    Mertins, Kai
    ;
    Jäkel, Frank-Walter
    ;
    Deng, Qu
    Higher food quality and more dynamic food chain environment have resulted in new challenges for food traceability. In order to meet these challenges, traditional food traceability frameworks need to be evolved. This paper introduced environment of a dynamic food chain network. It addressed limitations to current traceability frameworks, thus determined researches to be done in the future. For semantic interoperability, ontology configuration based integration approach is introduced, which is based on the concept of hybrid ontology. This approach is supposed to be more flexible and should lead to business alignment, which adapts various traceability needs in the supply chain network. In short, this paper will lead to a credible, transparent food chain network.
  • Publication
    Sustainable key-figure benchmarking for small and medium sized enterprises
    ( 2012)
    Mertins, Kai
    ;
    Kohl, Holger
    ;
    Riebartsch, Oliver
    Sustainability as a concept of long-term economical, ecological and social orientation has an increasing impact on decision making processes within today's industry. In order to catch up with this development, modern Benchmarking approaches need to cover more than economical aspects. Therefore, the Fraunhofer IPK has extended the scope of the BenchmarkIndex, which is the leading key-figure-based Benchmarking analysis for SMEs. The core element of this approach is the integration of an additional ""sustainability perspective"" to the underlying four perspectives of the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), so that Benchmarking results will not only enhance companies' economical performances, but also take environmental requirements such as energy-efficiency and social responsibility into consideration. Due to the wide dissemination of the BenchmarkIndex, comprehensive sustainable indicators will be accessible to more than 100.000 SMEs worldwide, especially sensitising those that barely have paid attention to sustainability yet, in order to realise a targeted impact for the sustainable production worldwide.
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