Whitepaper How companies get through crises better
With a new white paper, Fraunhofer wants to support manufacturing companies in strengthening their resilience in order to be better prepared for crises such as the pandemic or the flood disaster in the Ahr valley.
Companies on the topic
The conclusion of the researchers: Anyone who introduces sustainable measures to increase resilience remains innovative and successful even in crises.
Against the background of current crises such as the corona pandemic or the flood disaster in summer 2021, it becomes clear that crises that hit insufficiently resilient value chains can have dramatic effects on companies and even entire economies. The consequences of the corona pandemic have also hit the German economy hard. Many industries report delivery problems, especially the automotive industry, but also the construction industry, furniture manufacturers, the paper industry and bicycle manufacturers – even toys are in short supply.
The German economy is facing enormous challenges today. It must bring innovative technologies to the market in the fight against climate change and expand its technological sovereignty in global competition. The Resyst whitepaper deepens the understanding of resilient value creation and offers manufacturing companies practical know-how to increase their resilience and thus secure long-term success.
Prof. Reimund Neugebauer, President of the Fraunhofer Society
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What is resilience?
The Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon defines resilience as follows: “Entrepreneurial resilience is the ability of a company to withstand external shocks or distortions in the social, economic or political framework and to adapt to new conditions. For this purpose, companies must be able to maintain their stability despite external influences, to return to the initial state or to adopt a new state of equilibrium. In this way, they withstand external influences and can survive in the market for a long time. In contrast to robustness, in which companies face changes without adapting their structure, resilience aims to make adjustments quickly to maintain the ability to act and, if necessary, to fundamentally redesign structures and processes. Maintaining functionality is only the minimum goal. The ideal goal of a successful reorganization is the ability to act more agile and ultimately more innovative than before the onset of the crisis.
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Reaction to crises and unexpected incidents
The industry should take the dramatic supply bottlenecks as an opportunity to check its ability to be resilient and to plan future-oriented measures, experts advise. This is where the whitepaper “Resyst Resilient Value Creation in the Manufacturing Industry – Innovative, Successful, Resistant to Crisis” comes in. 17 Fraunhofer Institutes of the Fraunhofer Group for Production contribute their experience and current research results and give recommendations for action.
The whitepaper examines the effects of unexpected incidents and sudden crises on companies and discusses measures and decisions that can be taken at the level of the company, the value creation system or politics in order to significantly increase resilience. The website www.produktion.fraunhofer.de supplements the whitepaper with further examples of leap innovations as well as prototypes and demonstrators.
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Resilience as an important competitive factor
Why should companies work on their resilience? Dramatic events have happened over and over again for centuries, but the global network makes the effects more complex.
The issue of resilience is still underestimated. Our whitepaper aims to raise awareness of this complex topic so that those responsible in the manufacturing industry can take urgent measures to improve resilience at an early stage.
Prof. Holger Kohl, deputy director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK and coordinator of the white paper on the Resyst research project
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With the current experience from the corona pandemic and the flood disaster, the Fraunhofer innovation program Resyst takes up the requirements of Germany as a business location for resilient and dynamic value creation systems with consistently high productivity and individualization. Because resilience to crises and incidents of all kinds is developing into a decisive competitive factor.
The four basic characteristics of resilience: adaptivity, anticipation, robustness and the ability to regenerate.
(Image: Fraunhofer)
Traditional business models are often not up to the demands of crises. Above all, it is about resilient behavior in the area of risk management and the avoidance of uncontrollable production stoppages as well as excessive additional effort in work organization.
Current challenges for the German economy
Extreme fluctuations in demand
Unimagined critical processes and infrastructures
Simultaneity of highly dynamic events
Extreme pressure to innovate
Macroeconomic Effects
Example: additive manufacturing
The whitepaper gives various examples of how resilient companies can meet these challenges, but only one thing is mentioned here: Additive manufacturing as an alternative technology. The industry has already made initial experiences with the use of additively manufactured components. In very few cases, however, they cover the wide range of additive manufacturing options. With expanded knowledge of these procedures and the availability of the necessary, ready-to-use data, new opportunities open up to minimize downtimes in the event of a crisis. It is therefore necessary to be able to convert data from different sources and with different file formats into a complete machine code for the respective process without loss. This is the basis for a quick change in manufacturing technology. In addition, with some additive manufacturing processes, it is already possible to carry out quick on-site repairs using mobile manufacturing capacities in order to reduce downtime in areas with poor infrastructure.
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Framework model gives recommendations for action
The whitepaper presents the “Framework Model for Resilient Value Creation” that Fraunhofer researchers have developed across institutes. According to the researchers, it offers a consistent framework that addresses all relevant aspects of resilience, networks them with one another and links them with action-oriented solution modules. The aim is to enable companies to combine the strategically designed resilience goals with the requirements of day-to-day business. In addition, the framework model and the analyzes are illustrated with practical recommendations for action, concrete examples and a series of case studies.
Resilience is more than just crisis prevention, it also helps to remain innovative and agile beyond crises. After all, intact and resilient value creation systems are essential for Germany as a business location.
Prof. Holger Kohl, deputy director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK and coordinator of the white paper on the Resyst research project
