Fields of Research

Influence of Additive Manufacturing on Supply Chains

Additive manufacturing has been around for almost four decades and is currently one of the companies' most interesting disruptive technologies. The importance of additive manufacturing in the context of industrial production is increasing due to the further development of additive manufacturing processes and machines and the more extensive selection of starting materials that can be used. In the meantime, prototypes and increasingly components with the character of an end product are being additively manufactured. The possibility of manufacturing components from digital files regardless of location, even in on-demand production, has an impact on the holistic supply chain and on the internal logistical processes of a production company. Furthermore, due to on-demand and point-of-use production, additive manufacturing can help mitigate supply chain disruptions and thus increase supply chain resilience. This research area aims to identify the changes in internal logistical processes compared to traditional manufacturing processes, examine the increase in supply chain resilience, and create recommendations for implementing additive manufacturing processes. The focus is mainly on the automotive industry and the medical industry.

Contact person: Alexander Bade

Circular Economy in E-Commerce

Stricter environmental regulations and decreasing raw material resources increase the importance of reverse supply chains (RL). In addition, the growing online business and society's increasing ecological awareness means that the sustainable design of closed-loop supply chains assumes even greater attention. Difficulties have arisen so far in the implementation of RL. Furthermore, already established models are only oriented toward economic targets. Thus, environmentally oriented variables are rarely considered. The research project aims to identify approaches to overcoming obstacles in introducing an RL strategy. Moreover, optimization models are to be set up that include ecological aspects and performance-related criteria to create added value in the future for companies, the environment, and customers.

Contact person: Darleen Dolch

Maintenance Management and Spare Parts Logistics

Machinery breakdown and process downtime can lead to high economic losses in industrial companies and have fatal impacts on global supply chains. For this reason, the strategic aspect of maintenance is increasingly becoming the focus of companies, which are more and more often relying on a predictive maintenance strategy. In particular, developments in the field of artificial intelligence, Big Data, and novel manufacturing processes are creating both new opportunities and challenges within this particular field. The aim of the research is the logistic effects of current technologies on maintenance within the plant management as well as the impacts of new technologies like additive manufacturing of spare parts logistics.

Contact person: Marcel André Hoffmann

Cybersecurity in Supply Chain Management

In modern supply chains, individual actors are connected through digital channels to exchange information and enable the value creation of products and services. The integration of new technologies and digital networks increase the attack surface of supply chains and make them vulnerable to various cyber-attacks. The consequences of a cyber-attack can be devastating, affecting a large number of connected companies, halting production and causing high financial losses. The rising number of cyber-attacks annually emphasizes the significance of this topic. While earlier academic literature mainly concentrated on cybersecurity within corporations, there is now a growing awareness in the research community for implementing cybersecurity strategies across the entire supply chain.
In this context, this research project will investigate strategies and measures to strengthen the resilience of supply chains against cyber risks and the impact of cyber-attacks and countermeasures on physical supply chain structures.

Contact person: Richard Pergande

Sustainable Production Planning for Distributed Manufacturing Systems

As a result of the ongoing globalization, the competitive pressure in the market and the demand for highly agile companies intensified. To meet the requirements, there is a tendency to produce goods in globally dispersed production facilities. At the same time, an individual company has to face growing pressure regarding the limitation of the negative impacts caused by climate change. An approach to meet both the economic and ecological demands is sustainable, distributed production scheduling. Sustainable production scheduling aims to integrate sustainable optimization criteria into traditional optimization problems without significantly reducing economic performance. Of particular interest is to show the potential of metaheuristics to reduce the total energy consumption and the amount of carbon emissions for companies with distributed manufacturing facilities. Therefore, the aim of this research area is first of all to analyze the problem properties for small problems with the help of optimizations models. With those insights, the aim is to develop heuristic algorithms that even solve complex scheduling problems with high solution quality.

Contact person: Martin Schönheit

Supplier Risk Management

The increasing networking of supply chains and outsourcing of value-added activities to suppliers raise the vulnerability of supply chains against risks. A key risk driver is thereby seen on the procurement side, which smallest shaping unit displays supplier-customer relationships. To make a contribution to the effective management of supplier risks, the identification of risks posed by a supplier directly to the purchaser is the main focus of the research. Based on this, it is investigated how to reduce the significant risks in the context of supplier management by means of measures taken by the suppliers’ control.

Contact person: Prof. Dr. Lasch

Risk Modeling in the Supply Chain

Current economic trends like globalization, outsourcing as well as an intensified focus on efficiency and lean management practices lead to a higher exposure of supply chains to various external and internal risks. Supply chain risks receive particular attention since they have the potential to impede the flow of material and even jeopardize the existence of supply chain members (Top 5 Supply Chain Disruptions 2014). This research area analyzes supply chain risks, their propagation, and interdependencies in order to systematically optimize supply chains by considering effective mitigation strategies.