Concept of innovation transfer from corporate incubators

Due to the increase of disruptive innovations and accelerating product lifecycles, focusing on only incremental innovation is not enough to ensure long-term corporate growth. However, deadlocked internal structures and the day-to-day business prevent companies from reaching their full innovation potential. To escape the dilemma, companies are increasingly counting on corporate incubators for the development of radical innovations. Outside existing structures, project teams, external expertise or the integration of start-ups accelerates the innovation process. However, the long-term corporate strategy leads to the fact that most of the innovations from corporate incubators are reintegrated into the parent company. A successful transfer of external innovations is therefore a central challenge, which is so far described insufficiently in the literature by mainly focusing on the Not Invented Here Syndrome. To implement a successful transfer from a corporate incubator, a defined strategy considering the situational context is required. Especially the transfer object and the characteristics of the corporate incubator are decisive. The aim of the paper is therefore to display the problems of a transfer of innovations from corporate incubators to the parent company and to introduce a concept for a solution model of a situation specific transfer process

Typing of innovations from corporate incubator

There are different organizational units to promote corporate innovations these days. Especially corporate incubators are one way to encourage radical innovations outside the core business. One of the major challenge thereby is the reintegration of innovations into the corporate process. The author therefore develops a model for a situation specific transfer process for innovation from corporate incubators that fit to the corporate strategy. Up to now it is not examined in literature which types of innovations are originally developed within corporate incubators. In this paper we therefore examine different types of innovations and identify which of them occur in different innovation environments, especially corporate incubators. By identifying 5 characteristic types of corporate incubator s a more detailed allocation of the innovation types is made due to their distinctive competencies

Development of a framework for the flexibility assessment of automotive production concepts

The automotive body shop meets numerous new requirements in the context of electric mobility. Various production concepts currently exist to meet these requirements. Particularly, flexible solutions are gaining in importance. However, the actual effects on body shop are unclear. The aim of this paper is therefore to develop an evaluation framework for the flexibility of production concepts in body shop. First, general and specific requirements for an innovative body shop are derived and characteristics of production concepts in body shop identified. Subsequently, a correlation analysis between requirements and characteristics lays the basis for a conception and validation of possible production concepts

Potential Analysis Of Flexible Small Series Production Of Spare Parts By Direct Polymer Additive Tooling

In recent decades, there has been an increasing creation of vehicle model variants and product individualization for customer needs. There is a need for a greater variety of spare parts which is leading to high requirements on their logistics. As a result of this trend, automotive production companies have to ensure the provision of many different spare parts as part of their post-fulfillment obligations. However, the surplus spare parts stock will increase the operation cost of the company. This implies the need for a more flexible approach to spare parts production and provision to improve profitability compared to existing process chains. In this research paper, the potential of flexible spare parts production and provision is discussed. For this purpose, the state of spare part production technologies and existing approaches for spare part service are analyzed regarding their technological characteristics, flexibility as well as cost structure. Following this, an approach for flexible production for spare parts with regard to its potential is analyzed and demonstrated based on three exemplary automotive use cases using additively manufactured production resources. In the casting use case, a Fused Filament Fabricated (FFF) additively manufactured speedometer screw model will be used as a sand casting form. The production of deep-drawn car body parts using polymer-based FFF forming tools is investigated in the second use case. Lastly, the production of ignition distributor caps by PolyJet Modelling (PJM) manufactured Injection Molding (PUR-RIM) molds is presented

Design for 3D Printed Tools: Mechanical Material Properties for Direct Polymer Additive Tooling

In relation to the fourth industrial revolution, traditional manufacturing methods cannot serve the flexibility demands related to mass customization and small series production. Rapid tooling provided by generative manufacturing has been suggested recently in the context of metal forming. Due to the high loads applied during processes to such tooling, a purposeful mechanical description of the additively manufactured (AM) materials is crucial. Until now, a comprehensive characterization approach for AM polymers is required to allow a sophisticated layout of rapid tooling. In detail, information on compressive and flexural mechanical properties of solid infilled materials made by additive manufacturing are sparsely available. These elementary mechanical properties are evaluated in the present study. They result from material specimens additively manufactured in the fused filament fabrication (FFF) process. The design of the experiments reveals significant influences of the polymer and the layer height on the resulting flexural and compressive strength and modulus as well as density, hardness, and surface roughness. As a case study, these findings are applied to a cup drawing operation based on the strongest and weakest material and parameter combination. The obtained data and results are intended to guide future applications of direct polymer additive tooling. The presented case study illustrates such an application and shows the range of manufacturing quality achievable within the materials and user settings for 3D printing