Technologies and solutions for digital value creation: A project for SMEs

“When it comes to digitalizing production processes, the main problems are organizing the transformation process and managing the transition. Of course it’s essential to know and master the technologies involved. But it’s just as important to ensure that no one gets left behind.”

These are the words of Prof. Alexander Pflaum, director of our Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services SCS and overall project manager of “Technologies and Solutions for Digitalized Value Creation.” In the now completed project, he and his team researched and developed practical digitalization solutions in the production and logistics environment of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to facilitate these companies’ entry into and implementation of Industrie 4.0. Find out more in the video interview.

About Prof. Dr. Alexander Pflaum

Professor Alexander Pflaum is an expert in the use of information and communication technologies in value-creation processes and uses his knowledge to forge links between the worlds of technology and management. After graduating with a degree in electrical engineering, he went on to complete a doctorate on the topic of RFID and supply chain management at the former Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU). He conducts research on the question of how added value can be created from data.

Pflaum has been working at the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS and its Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services SCS for over 20 years in a wide range of positions. These include director of the Center for Intelligent Objects CIO, the Department of Technology and Supply Chain Management, and the Research Group Business Models Bamberg, which studies the development of business models in the digital world and helps companies implement these models in their everyday business activities. Since October 2011, he has also held the Chair of Business Administration, with special emphasis on supply chain management, at the University of Bamberg. In May 2016, Pflaum was appointed the new director of the Center for Applied Research on Supply Chain Services SCS, which has locations in Nuremberg and Bamberg and whose vision is to make organizations fit for the future in a technology-driven world full of seemingly uncontrollable data.

To the profile of Prof. Dr. Alexander Pflaum