SCHUNK relies on collaboration within strong networks: Within these networks, future-oriented topics are shaped collectively and innovations are brought to market more quickly.
Next Level Mittelstand
Next Level Mittelstand is a collaborative platform that brings together small and medium-sized enterprises, startups, and IT experts to jointly develop digital solutions for day-to-day manufacturing – initiated and supported by SCHUNK. The focus is on hands-on collaboration: companies share their experiences and, working in small teams, develop specific applications and “quick wins” that ultimately benefit all members.
Project: Product Carbon Footprint
The easy way to calculate carbon emissionsg
What is the carbon footprint of your product – that is, all greenhouse gas emissions generated throughout the entire product life cycle? This is an important question when it comes to a company’s own sustainability goals and future reporting requirements. However, small and medium-sized enterprises in particular often feel uncertain in this regard: they face high pressure, have little time, and have access to very little standardized data.
The “Product carbon footprint” project has developed a pragmatic approach for systematically and efficiently calculating carbon footprints across a product portfolio and communicating the results in a standardized manner. This quickly turns a challenging requirement into a manageable process for small and medium enterprises.
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Product Carbon Footprint
IPAI
IPAI (Innovation Park Artificial Intelligence) is an innovation ecosystem and a European hub for AI technology in Heilbronn. There, companies, research institutions, and public sector stakeholders collaborate to develop and implement AI applications. IPAI supports organizations in their AI transformation and promotes collaboration, innovation, and education while advocating for a human-centered, responsible use of AI in Europe. SCHUNK has been involved as a strategic partner right from the outset.
Project: expertAIse
Preserving experiential knowledge
The goal is to preserve the knowledge of employees who are retiring or transferring to another department by systematically capturing and digitizing implicit, previously undocumented expert knowledge. Generative AI uses features such as voice input and real-time follow-up questions to systematically elicit knowledge and make it available in a clearly structured format.
This helps prevent knowledge loss due to retirement or extended absences, and breaks down silos. An AI-powered demonstrator transforms this wealth of data into easy-to-use models that can then be used, for example, to simplify the onboarding and training of new employees.
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IPAI
Manufacturing‑X
The overarching goal of this business, government, and research initiative is to standardize, simplify, and – ideally – automate communication and data transfer between companies in different industries – whether along the supply chain or between suppliers and partners. SCHUNK acts as an innovative driving force – with a wide reach in the SME sector. The digitalization initiative strengthens companies’ competitiveness, resilience, and sustainability of companies – thus boosting of the European economic area as a whole.
Project: Collaborative Engineering
Developing easily together
“Factory‑X” is an emerging open, interoperable data ecosystem for industry. Within this framework, the “Collaborative engineering” subproject provides a solution for cross-organizational collaboration in development and change processes.
The goal is to exchange product data, requirements, and engineering artifacts throughout the supply chain in a structured manner while maintaining data sovereignty. Standardized data models and secure data rooms make it possible to collaborate on products in real time and coordinate changes. This significantly shortens development cycles.