Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries

Industrial production in high-wage countries like Germany is still at risk. Yet, there are many counter-examples in which producing companies dominate their competitors by not only compensating for their specific disadvantages in terms of factor costs (e.g. wages, energy, duties and taxes) but rather by minimising waste using synchronising integrativity as well as by obtaining superior adaptivity on alternating conditions. In order to respond to the issue of economic sustainability of industrial production in high-wage countries, the leading production engineering and material research scientists of RWTH Aachen University together with renowned companies have established the Cluster of Excellence 'Integrative Production Technology for High-Wage Countries'. This compendium comprises the cluster's scientific results as well as a selection of business and technology cases, in which these results have been successfully implemented into industrial practice in close cooperation with more than 30 companies of the industrial production sector.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Christian Brecher holds the Chair of Machine Tools at the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and is director and head of the department of production machines of the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT in Aachen, Germany, since January 2004.