The 1990s: Double Restart

Contribution to the development of eastern Germany

The history of Fraunhofer IPK in the 1990s cannot be told without considering the general upheaval that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification. These events set in motion processes that would have a significant impact on the work at the institute. On the one hand, the institute was heavily involved in the development of western structures and economics in East Germany after 1990. On the other hand, the general recession in West Germany and the discontinuation of Berlin subsidy led to a structural shift in the institute’s client base, which would have a direct impact on its research.

There was much work to be done in developing both industry and research after reunification, and Fraunhofer IPK was active in both areas. From 1992 to 1996, the institute maintained a branch office in Berlin Mitte, where scientists and engineers from the former Academy of Sciences of the GDR were able to gain experience in project acquisition and in collaborating with industry partners. Parts of the branch office staff were transferred to Fraunhofer IPK after 1996.

At the same time, various initiatives supported East German manufacturing companies in their transition to a market economy. As early as 1990, four new locations in East Germany were added to the CIM Technology Transfer Centers. The CIM-TT Center Berlin, which had been based at the PTZ since 1988, took on the coordination and supported the establishment of the locations in Chemnitz, Dresden, Magdeburg, and Wismar. It also initiated the establishment of an »Investment Market Berlin-Brandenburg« under the patronage of Federal Minister of Economics Jürgen W. Möllemann. The Investment Market was intended to provide investors with information about the Berlin-Brandenburg districts, companies slated for privatization, and the PTZ’s technology-oriented management expertise. At the same time, a Center for Workshop-Oriented Programming Methods, known within Fraunhofer IPK as the »WOP Center«, worked to simplify the programming of shop-floor equipment using graphical-interactive input methods. After 1990, the center’s services were primarily utilized by interested parties from the new federal states.

Surface-level excellence

As early as the 1970s, researchers at IWF of TU Berlin had been experimenting with object recognition using sensors such as cameras, even before computers were capable of storing and analyzing the collected data. The reason for a research institute with a focus on production science to address this topic is clear: With increasing automation, for example in the automotive industry, industrial robots and other systems had to independently locate, identify, and move parts. Image analysis was also initially viewed as a subfield of sensor technology in projects at Fraunhofer IPK and used for simple handling processes. Examples included measuring the height and determining the position of stacked workpieces using two cameras mounted on an industrial robot, or the so-called »reach into the box« scenario, where objects are, in extreme cases, randomly piled on top of each other and overlap in camera images.

With better cameras and more powerful computers, the range of applications for this technology expanded rapidly in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Under the leadership of Dr. Bertram Nickolay, Fraunhofer IPK established a department for pattern recognition that focused on automated image analysis, including for application in quality assurance. In 1992, Dr. Nickolay was awarded the Joseph von Fraunhofer Prize for his doctorate on a »trainable image analysis system to evaluate material surfaces and detect surface defects« that was trained using supervised machine learning – the second such prize for Fraunhofer IPK.

Modeling and simulation of factory processes

Operating at a higher level was the »Demonstration Center for Simulation in Production and Logistics«, which was officially inaugurated in September 1994. In the 1980s, Fraunhofer IPK had developed the MOSYS simulation system for planning complex manufacturing systems on the scale of entire factory halls. As part of CIM, the idea emerged to model not only the flow of materials within the factory layout but also the surrounding processes and their interdependencies – from order receipt through material logistics and manufacturing to the finished part, including the corresponding subdivisions and functional groups within a company. Systems commercially available at the time were not capable of this, because they were unable to map the necessary process integration. When, in 1986, processes within the company were to be modeled as part of a comprehensive study on the state of CIM technology for the automotive manufacturer VW, the foundations for Integrated Enterprise Modeling (IUM) and the MO²GO modeling tool were laid. In the years that followed, Fraunhofer IPK used this base to support numerous companies in mapping their business processes and optimizing them in a targeted manner.

Starting in 1994, the Demonstration Center set itself the task of making simulation solutions and technologies accessible to a broader user base. To this end, it not only offered training on various common simulation systems but also conducted simulation games in which companies were enabled, through the use of simulation techniques, to identify and remedy weaknesses in their processes. The interactive simulation game LIFE!, in which participants had to organize drill production according to different process logics, formed the basis for the serious games that are still being adapted at Fraunhofer IPK to ever-changing macroeconomic conditions – most recently to the requirements of the circular economy, for the implementation of digital product passports or for the development and training of resilient business processes.