To path indicator Subpages of “Studies“ To navigation by target groups To navigation by topic To quick access To footer with other services
To content
lecture hall with a lot of students © Jürgen Huhn​/​TU Dortmund
PROMOTING A DIGITAL HUB

Making the Automotive Industry More Sustainable

-
in
  • Top News
  • Research
A group photo of people in front of posters © Lehrstuhl IIM
The participants are collaborating on a sustainable circular economy for the automotive industry.
Creating low-threshold access to circular value creation in the automotive industry is the goal of the DIONA (Digital Ecosystem for a Sustainable Circular Economy in the Automotive Industry) research project, which will receive some 3.3 million euros in funding over three years from Projektträger Karlsruhe (PTKA) on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The project is managed by the Chair of Industrial Information Management (Prof. Boris Otto) of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. From TU Dortmund University, the Department of IT in Production and Logistics (Prof. Markus Rabe) from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Department of Sociology of Technology of the Dortmund Social Research Center from the Department of Social Sciences are also involved. Other project partners include the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering (ISST) in Dortmund as well as the Chemnitz University of Technology.

As an accompanying scientific project in the BMBF funding line “On the way to sustainable mobility through circular value creation (MobilKreis)”, DIONA oversees twelve joint practical projects that develop innovative system solutions for more sustainable and cycle-oriented production and use of vehicles alongside companies in the automotive and mobility industry. DIONA will be supporting these projects with a specially developed digital hub and working on overarching research questions. What’s more, the findings from the project will be made accessible to an interested public and particularly to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through transfer events and cyber-physical laboratories.

Reusing components

Production in the automotive sector goes hand in hand with high resource use and emissions levels. With that in mind, the project aims to promote a circular economy by reprocessing and reusing existing components instead of continuously producing new ones and thus consuming valuable resources. A good example of this is batteries in electric vehicles, the production of which requires rare ground wires. Reprocessing these wires at the end of their life cycle significantly improves sustainability and efficiency.

“In order to add as many components as possible to the value creation cycle, we use DIONA to analyze which data and information is required across all joint projects, both during production and during use,” explains project manager Prof. Boris Otto: “For instance, headlights or body components could be used again – but so far, not enough data has been recorded and not enough of the existing information has been evaluated. We hope to change that.”

Further Information (German only)

Contact for inqueries:

Picture reference: (f.l.) Antonio Isopp (Social Research Center sfs, TU Dortmund), Marlon Philipp (sfs, TU Dortmund), Robert Schmelzer (TU Chemnitz), Christoph Hoppe (Fraunhofer ISST), Joachim Hunker (Department of IT in Production and Logistics ITPL, TU Dortmund), Tennessee Schrage (TU Chemnitz), Benjamin Koch (TU Chemnitz), Stephanie Winkelmann (Chair of Industrial Information Management IIM, TU Dortmund), Fabienne Schnieders (IIM, TU Dortmund), Katharina Langenbach (ITPL, TU Dortmund) and Hendrik van der Valk (IIM, TU Dortmund).

Back

To top of page