The Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics is introducing "Open Enterprise Labs" as a new collaboration format. The German Logistics Award 2023, won with Dachser, was a major endorsement for this type of cooperation. Companies should now be able to work together more extensively on projects.
Accordingly, the “Open Enterprise Labs” will allow several industry partners to collaborate on open-source solutions under the umbrella of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) – also with the aim of creating industry-wide de facto standards. “Since 2013, the Fraunhofer Enterprise Labs have developed into a real success story,” says Michael ten Hompel, Managing Director of the IML. “That’s why we now want to deliberately allow several companies to participate in our cutting-edge research and development simultaneously and collaboratively, and for a comparatively low cost. We want to motivate the industry to approach logistics as a team sport.”
Photos: IML
The goal is to find a way to adopt new technologies and common standards – from programming standardized interfaces to jointly developing artificial intelligence. "Only those who participate can help determine where the journey leads," said ten Hompel.
Such an Open Enterprise Lab project is intended to run for three years and involve at least three companies interested in developments in related topicsor application areas. Fraunhofer IML manages and supports the process and undertakes the development work. The solutions developed in the Open Enterprise Labs then form the basis for individual business models – with an open core. The format initially starts with a handful of research topics.
The first include:
- The "Digital Product Passport": It contains everything that stakeholders along a value chain need to know, from the materials used and CO2 footprint to product and repair information, as well as disposal and recycling instructions.
- «LogOS» (Logistics Operating System) is an operating system for intralogistics that automatically organizes internal transport using driverless transport vehicles or autonomous mobile robots.
- «EfficientCargo» aims to increase the utilization of cargo spaces (in trucks, aircraft, ships) in a cost- and resource-efficient manner and to achieve dynamic adjustment of transport capacities as well as monitoring of cargo space and package dimensions.
