Industrial production is undergoing a fundamental paradigm shift in the wake of current developments such as digitization, scarcity of resources and the personalization of products, which is increasingly enabling industry to return to the city. This trend is also contributing to improved collaboration and decentralization of manufacturing companies. This can enable ecologically, economically and socially beneficial value creation in urban areas. The cooperation with an institute from Singapore is therefore not only highly relevant due to the excellent reputation of SIMTech and the two participating German institutes of the TU Braunschweig (IWF: Institute for Machine Tools and Manufacturing Technology, ISU: Institute for Sustainable Urbanism), but also particularly suitable with the connection to Singapore as a megacity and city state and the thus possible use as a real laboratory.
Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology
The research presence "Industrial Symbiosis and Urban Factories Hub" aims to create a joint research infrastructure between the Technical University of Braunschweig and the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech) in Singapore and to transfer it into a sustainable operation. With the establishment and operation of the research presence in connection with the industry-related research factories "The Learning Factory" in Braunschweig and "ModelFactory" in Singapore on sustainable urban production, an important contribution is made to the research fields of sustainable cities, energy efficiency, and environmental and water technologies. The consolidation phase builds on four fields of action whose foundations were laid in the first funding phase. The central organizational goal of the second funding phase is the establishment of the research presence as an independent legal entity in Singapore. This will strengthen the visibility of German research and innovation in Singapore and the Asian region, enhance the research quality of German projects and undertakings, and support the transfer of technologies and methods.
In addition to concrete technologies, organizational and system-related methods are to be further developed in order to fundamentally investigate the mutual influences and potentials. In this context, overcoming the barriers to the introduction of circular economy concepts, such as Industrial Symbiosis, is a particular challenge. The value chains of the future in urban areas are to be released from their negative influences on the surrounding city and the positive potentials are to be tapped in the process. Urban areas offer many potentials due to their high density of knowledge and creativity, workforce, infrastructure as well as consumers and prosumers. The scientific focus is also on the processing of joint research projects within the framework of the research presence. As an "Industrial Symbiosis and Urban Fatories Hub", future projects and those already in progress will have the opportunity to carry out case studies, application-oriented research and a transfer of results and findings in the research presence as a joint infrastructure. With the integration of scientists in the research work in Singapore the scientific quality of the research work is strenghend.