Research and development for efficiency and precision at Fraunhofer IWU

New aspects in production engineering - both in industry and R&D - actually arise from the point of efficiency and precision. This seems to be an additional task in development for the future decade. Driven mostly by the automotive industry and its visions new manufacturing processes are under development and test. The demand of the market shows tendencies to a smaller number of parts per unit. This causes various problems mainly in line production. Especially demands of modern lightweight design seems to be hard to satisfy just by stretching conventional production methods. Thus it is necessary to find new approaches. Adapting integrated process chains in new production technologies and machinery would achieve in additional benefits for the automotive industry and suppliers. The paper gives an overview of main R&D fields and competencies at Fraunhofer IWU, introduces representative results of projects, mostly strong product related, dealing with powertrain as well as car body components. It touches the challenges related to the processes of bringing these technologies up to production engineering. A few interesting aspects will be pointed out. The general approach of integrated process chains includes technologies as well as the required equipment and the applied monitoring and quality insuring systems.