Automation
Change at the top of Fraunhofer IPA
The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation will have a new head from January 2020: Prof. Alexander Sauer, IPA Division Director of Resource-Efficient Production, will support Managing Director Prof. Thomas Bauernhansl.
After Prof. Bauernhansl had led the third-largest Fraunhofer Institute alone for many years, he was most recently supported by Prof. Fritz Klocke from Aachen.
Prof. Sauer has been Head of the Institute for Energy Efficiency in Production at the University of Stuttgart (EEP) and Division Director at Fraunhofer IPA since 2015. He completed a double degree in mechanical engineering and business administration at RWTH Aachen University in 1997, where he also obtained his doctorate in 2005. Prof. Sauer is the inventor of the energy efficiency index for industry, head of the ultra-efficient factory and spokesman for the Kopernikus project SynErgie, a scientific project as part of the energy transition.
The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation, or Fraunhofer IPA for short, is one of the largest institutes in the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft with almost 1,000 employees. The total budget amounts to 74 million euros. The institute's research focuses on organizational and technological tasks in production. 15 specialist departments work together on an interdisciplinary basis, coordinated by six business units, primarily with the automotive, mechanical and plant engineering, electronics and microsystems technology, energy, medical and biotechnology and process industries.
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