Who are we?

Fraunhofer Austria Research GmbH, established in 2008 as the first European subsidiary of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, is a leading research partner for the Austrian industry. With over 100 scientists across its locations in Vienna, Graz, Klagenfurt, and Wattens, Fraunhofer Austria focuses on applied research that benefits both businesses and society. The organization operates two centers: the Center for Sustainable Production and Logistics and the Center for Data Driven Design.

Fraunhofer Austria specializes in digital networking, automation in manufacturing, assembly, and logistics, as well as human-centered workplace design, AI, and machine vision. It supports companies in planning efficient and sustainable factories, improving production and supply chain management, and advancing digital logistics. Their expertise includes advanced data analytics, computer vision, and AI-driven solutions, positioning Fraunhofer Austria as a leader in Industry 4.0 innovations.

Ambition statements

We are working in the NEO-CYCLE project to support the digitalization and optimization of production and logistics processes. A key focus is investigating the data ecosystem and developing Digital Product Passport (DPP) demonstrators. Additionally, we aim to optimize processes across companies using DPP data and explore new business models enabled by DPP.

Technologies

• We are not chemical engineers and therefore not part of the material recycling processes. But the technology that will be used and evaluated is in our interest.
• In sense of the DPP:
– UPC has a distributed ledger (blockchain) based DPP solution. We would like to build on this and test the     transferability of this solution.
– Moreover, we have experiences with data spaces and would like to combine this technology with distributed ledger.
• Regarding optimization we will use some tools, but I think it is not under the technology umbrella, but correct me if I am wrong.