At a meeting at the Production Technology Center (PTZ) in Berlin, Prof. Dr. Anderson Ribeiro Correia, Rector of the Instituto Tecnológico de Aeronáutica (ITA), and Prof. Dr. Dr. Eckart Uhlmann, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Engineering and Design Technology IPK, agreed to deepen the partnership between the two research institutions by officially sealing the establishment of the "Fraunhofer IPK Project Office for Advanced Manufacturing at ITA". The newly launched project office follows on from an extraordinarily successful partnership between the German research institution and one of Brazil's top engineering institutes. It replaces the former Fraunhofer Project Center for Advanced Manufacturing at ITA (FPC@ITA), which existed from 2017 to 2021. The FPC@ITA exceeded its original project volume by more than three times, reaching about 11 million euros instead of the planned 2.6 million euros. A total of 51 R&D projects were carried out, including 31 industrial projects and 20 publicly funded projects. "In view of this remarkable success, we are pleased to extend and intensify our collaboration," says Dr. David Domingos, Head of Operations of the Fraunhofer IPK Project Office for Advanced Manufacturing @ ITA on the Fraunhofer IPK side. One of the longest running joint projects in collaboration with the National Confederation of Industry (CNI) and the National Service for Industrial Education (SENAI) in Brazil just celebrated its tenth anniversary. Fraunhofer IPK was commissioned by SENAI to develop and implement a network of 26 innovation institutes in Brazil, while ITA provided support in human resources development and offered special master's and doctoral programs for SENAI specialists. Another example of an FPC@ITA project is FERA (an acronym for Additive Manufactured Tools), which aims to increase the competitiveness of the Brazilian tooling industry. It involves 25 companies, mainly from the automotive sector, and four research and technology organizations. Both Fraunhofer IPK and ITA, with its Competence Center in Manufacturing (CCM-ITA), have many years of experience in modern production research and combine classic manufacturing expertise with a high level of know-how in so-called "digitally integrated production".
The planned focal points for the next few years are:
- Advanced manufacturing technologies
- Automation technology and robotics
- Data analytics and AI
- Industry 4.0 and digitalization
- Additive manufacturing technologies
Prof. Dr. Ronnie Rego, Head of Operations of the Fraunhofer IPK Project Office for Advanced Manufacturing @ ITA on the ITA side, emphasizes the perfectly aligned competencies of the cooperation partners: "We continue to leverage our complementary competencies to jointly address the needs of the Brazilian market." According to the current agreement, the Fraunhofer IPK Project Office for Advanced Manufacturing at ITA will operate until June 2024.
Autor(en): wi
