Industrial production is a supporting pillar and an innovation driver for the German economy. The increase of international competition as well as the scarcity of resources forces Germany to face the challenge not only of strengthening and further expanding its leadership position, but also of making the best possible use of available resources.

Framework conditions such as Directives of the European Union or the Federal Government additionally require intelligent concepts for how energy and raw materials can be saved or how to analyze, improve and control material cycles.

For this reason, over 60 companies from industry and research teamed up in 2010 to jointly develop solutions for efficient automotive production. The partners of the innovation alliance worked on five topics: planning of low-energy production, performance in the press plant, the resource-efficient tool and body construction as well as energy-efficient painting. Above all, the focus lay on the challenge to improve energy efficiency and material utilization.

Together with the leading partner, Volkswagen AG, the joint research was coordinated by the Fraunhofer Institute for Machine Tools and Forming Technology IWU and the Fraunhofer colleagues from Aachen and Stuttgart from 2010 to 2013. The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) supported the initiative in the concept of »Research for tomorrow's production« with € 15 million. The initiative was supervised by the project executing organization Karlsruhe (PTKA-PFT), under the grant no. 02PO2700 ff.