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PublicationReady for Take-off - Artificial Intelligence in Space Production( 2024-07-09)This whitepaper explores the potential and challenges of applying Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the production of aerospace components. Through various research activities at Fraunhofer IPT, six promising application fields for AI use have been identified: predictive quality in the manufacturing of complex parts, predictive maintenance for critical machines, automated evaluation of test processes, support for documentation tasks through generative language models, creation of digital twins, and adaptive process monitoring for specialized manufacturing procedures. The implementation of AI in aerospace production is hindered by limited data availability and complex qualification processes. The whitepaper presents a systematic approach that includes the identification, evaluation, prioritization, and piloting of use cases. The goal is to develop the necessary capabilities within the company to independently carry out future AI projects and maximize their benefits. The findings emphasize the need for a strategic and methodical approach to integrating AI into aerospace production to achieve efficiency gains and increase competitiveness.
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PublicationReady for Take-off - Künstliche Intelligenz in der Raumfahrtproduktion( 2024-07-09)Dieses Whitepaper untersucht das Potenzial und die Herausforderungen der Anwendung von Künstlicher Intelligenz (KI) in der Produktion von Raumfahrtkomponenten. Durch Forschungsaktivitäten des Fraunhofer IPT wurden sechs vielversprechende Anwendungsfelder für den Einsatz von KI identifiziert: Predictive-Quality in der Fertigung komplexer Bauteile, Predictive-Maintenance für kritische Maschinen, automatisierte Auswertung von Testprozessen, Unterstützung bei Dokumentationstätigkeiten durch generative Sprachmodelle, Erstellung digitaler Zwillinge und adaptive Prozessüberwachung für spezialisierte Fertigungsverfahren. Die Implementierung von KI in der Raumfahrtproduktion wird durch geringe Datenverfügbarkeit und aufwändige Qualifizierungsprozesse erschwert. Das Whitepaper stellt einen systematischen Ansatz vor, der die Identifizierung, Bewertung, Priorisierung und Pilotierung von Use Cases umfasst. Ziel ist es, langfristig die notwendigen Fähigkeiten im Unternehmen aufzubauen, um zukünftige KI-Projekte eigenständig durchzuführen und deren Nutzen zu maximieren. Die Ergebnisse betonen die Notwendigkeit eines strategischen und methodischen Vorgehens bei der Integration von KI in die Raumfahrtproduktion, um Effizienzsteigerungen zu realisieren und die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit der Raumfahrtstandorts Deutschland zu erhöhen.
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PublicationFrom Birds to Businesses - How Economies of Synchronization Boost Business Performance( 2024-05-28)In unserer schnelllebigen Geschäftswelt streben Unternehmen heute fortwährend nach innovativen Strategien, um ihr Wachstum zu fördern und ihre Effizienz zu steigern - insbesondere angesichts eines volatilen Unternehmensumfelds. Im vorliegenden Paper stellt das Fraunhofer IPT in Zusammenarbeit mit Henkel und der Leuphana Universität ein neues Konzept vor: Die »Economies of Synchronization«. Im Gegensatz zum Ansatz der »Economies of Scale« zielt dieses Konzept nicht darauf ab, rein die Produktionsquantität zu erhöhen, sondern vielmehr auf eine nachhaltige Steigerung der Ressourceneffizienz. Durch Synchronisationsmaßnahmen, wie beispielsweise die Koordination von Teammitgliedern, können Unternehmen Ressourcen minimieren, die Leistung maximieren und ihre Flexibilität erhöhen. Um Unternehmen auf ihrem Weg zu gesteigerter Effizienz und nachhaltigem Wachstum zu begleiten, haben wir einen strukturierten Ansatz entwickelt.
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PublicationFostering the European Innovation System( 2024-04-05)This white paper compares the innovation systems of the USA, China and the EU 27 countries at a national level. The aim of the study is to propose measures to promote innovation in Europe. The areas of basic research, commercialization and scaling are compared. It also discusses the structure and key characteristics of the research and innovation landscape in each comparison group. While there is a variety of funding options at the European level, the US innovation system is primarily based on private investors, while the Chinese system is characterized by a high degree of government control. The white paper identifies five key challenges of the European innovation system in comparison to the analyzed US and Chinese systems and presents four recommendations for action to overcome these challenges.
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PublicationPerformance Management of Corporate Venturing Activities in Manufacturing Companies: An Exploratory Study( 2023-12-19)Recent trends in manufacturing industries such as digitalization and sustainability have underlined the need for companies to significantly change their products and processes. This emphasizes the need for the capability to make use of radical innovations (radical innovation). However, many incumbent companies struggle to reliably create radical innovation since their research and development (R&D) is usually optimized to exploit competencies via incremental innovations. Thus, their innovation processes and setups fit the predictable and structurable needs of incremental innovation. In contrast, radical innovation are less predictable and, thus, require more agile and reactive processes. To benefit from startup-like structures, manufacturing companies started to increasingly use corporate venturing (CV) activities in the early 2010s. However, the performance of established forms of CV differs drastically. Also, there are still no definite findings on how to set up and use a performance management system to reliably increase CV performance. Therefore, this paper aims to explore the insights of practitioners on which problems and challenges occur in the innovation process of CV units and how they could be solved using performance management systems. To achieve this, the research includes an interview study wit 17 different companies of the manufacturing sector which run a CV unit.
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PublicationSupporting Deep Tech Startups to Streamline their Financial Marketing to Different Investor Types( 2023-10-26)Deep technology (DT) startups develop physical products based on cutting-edge technologies to create entirely new markets. Consequently, they have a comparably high demand for specialized infrastructure, expert knowledge and extended development cycles which result in large capital expenditures. However, especially early-stage (pre-seed/seed) DT startups often fail to raise sufficient funding from investors due to their large capital needs, severe technical challenges often not fully understood by investors, and long time to market. Therefore, this paper analyses the underlying issues by developing a model to support early-stage DT startups by assessing their fit with different investor types (e.g., business angels, venture capital, or other investment opportunities) in order to streamline and focus their funding process. This is achieved by applying the principal-agent-framework to model the information asymmetry between different investor types and DT startups. More than 60 relevant signals between startups and investors are derived from literature and structured in the four dimensions resources, team, sales market and technology. They are adapted to the requirements set by the signaling theory, as an approach to counteract the information asymmetry, and included into the model.
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PublicationCorporate Venturing - How to launch a corporate startup?( 2023-10-13)The presented study draws on the findings of a Cross Industry Group consisting of six renowned industrial companies and a range of expert contributors. The group explored both, the challenges and the key factors that contribute to successful corporate startup building. The most insightful aspects of their discussions have been condensed in this whitepaper.
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PublicationDer Ideenkompass: Ein Werkzeug für Innovatoren, Visionäre und kreative Köpfe( 2023-09-21)Jede große Innovation hat ihren Ursprung in einer Idee. Der entwickelte Ideenkompass unterstützt Visionäre und Unternehmen dabei, ihre Innovationsideen zu strukturieren, zu kommunizieren und weiterzuentwickeln. Er dient als Werkzeug um Gedanken zu ordnen, relevante Aspekte einer Innovationsidee herauszuarbeiten und sie verständlich darzustellen.Basierend auf Dissertationen, Forschungs- und Industrieprojekten wurden die sechs konstituierenden Elemente einer Innovationsidee identifiziert und im Ideenkompass zusammengeführt. Die Zusammenhänge zwischen den Elementen sowie auch die Auswirkung von Änderungen auf die gesamte Innovationsidee werden verdeutlicht. Mit dem Einsatz des Ideenkompass wird eine Steigerung der Innovationskraft erzielt.
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PublicationPotential-based Evaluation for Initial Selection of Technologies( 2023-08-24)Due to the increasing internationalization of markets, rising cost pressure, and shortened product life cycles, manufacturing companies are facing increasing competition and innovation pressure. To secure competitiveness, the early development of new and innovative technologies and their implementation in the market as products or services is paramount. To use available resources for innovation efficiently, potentials of new technologies must be exploited at early stages. The main objective of this paper is to support companies in early decision-making processes regarding new technologies by providing a systematic approach to technology assessment. For this purpose, a model is developed which supports the evaluation of the technology potentials based on the limited information available at an early stage and, thus, creates the basis for an initial technology selection.
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PublicationICNAP Study Report 2022( 2023-05-10)
