Headquartered in Stuttgart, the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA is part of Europe’s largest application-oriented research organization with focus on ressource-efficient production, connected production, smart robotics and cleanroom technologies, medicine and bioproduction technologies, material and surface technologies as well as manufacturing and process technologies.

Fraunhofer is Europe’s largest application-oriented research organization with research efforts geared entirely to people’s needs: health, security, communication, energy and the environment. With nearly 1,000 employees, Fraunhofer IPA is one of the largest institutes in the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. It has an annual budget of over 60 million euros, with more than one third coming from industrial projects. The 14 departments of Fraunhofer IPA are supplemented by six business units: Automotive, Machinery and Equipment Industry, Electronics and Microsystems, Power Industry, Medical Engineering and Biotechnology and Process Industry. This structure helps Fraunhofer IPA’s practice partners to improve their market position as well as support their market entry into new application fields.

The department DigITools for Manufacturing has broad experience in all production related IT topics, e.g. Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) or shopfloor automation and control in semiconductor manufacturing. These topics of production digitalization and networking are adressed by a wide range of experts from domains like production engineering, mechatronics engineering or software development. Smart machines, tools, parts and orders all interact with each other in near real time via the internet.The future focus will be on such cyber-physical production processes.

Fraunhofer IPA will contribute in regards to its expertise in semiconductor manufacturing, Industrie 4.0 and future concepts of digital production optimization.

Role

Fraunhofer IPA is responsible for the task 2.2.4 “Advanced Dispatch Control System” within WP2 “Agile Facility”. This task focuses on establishing a closed control loop for Supply Chain Management. Decisions for corrective actions will be made automatically based on events in supply chain, shop-floor and production IT systems. In addition, Fraunhofer IPA will be a member of the SemI40 Academic Board and will take part in WP6 “Dissemination, Exploitation and Standardization” in order to make the research activities and the progress of technology development visible to interested people outside the project consortium.

Key contribution

Fraunhofer IPA will contribute to SemI40 in regards to its expertise in semiconductor manufacturing, Industrie 4.0 and future concepts of digital production optimization. These topics are key for the future competitiveness of the European semiconductor industry. Basis for this expertise is the long research and development history in FP7 funded research projects such as IMAGINE or ManuCloud, national funded projects such as Virtual Fort Knox or eApps4Production as well as industrial projects. This cloud manufacturing expertise is also key in major research and development activities such as ARENA2036 or FutureWorkLab.