The German Federal Minister of Education and Science, Prof. Dr. Annette Schavan, has announced the winners of the top cluster competition. The “EffizienzCluster LogistikRuhr” under the guidance of Prof. Dr. ten Hompel, Fraunhofer Institute of Logistics and Material Flow in Dortmund, is one of them. It will receive fundings of approx. 40 Mio EUR for the next five years.
The goal is to develop and sell more than 100 new products until 2015 which will have a market potential of more than 2 billion EUR. It will secure existing jobs and generate more than 4.000 jobs with the partners of the cluster. The cluster aims to solve the economic requirements of tomorrow such as the individual supply chain, mobility and production with 25 % less investments and resources compared to today’s state of the art.
The cluster unifies the competences of 124 companies and 18 research institutes. The strength is the joint close cooperation between science and companies under one umbrella. It will result in a worldwide active centre of innovative design of highly efficient services in logistics.
The title of the cluster “Logistics 2.0: individual mobility” is an area of fundamental conflicts. On the one hand it shows the necessity of being more efficient in economic actions, on the other hand it is effected by the desire of the people towards individuality in all situations of life. Only the field of logistics is capable to fulfil both positions in an economic and ecologic manner.
The cluster will focus on seven technical and socio-technical topics and has started 33 cooperative projects which have a total volume of 106,3 Mio EUR.
