Posts Tagged Innovation
Germany one of the best innovation locations
October 17th, 2011 | Thema: News
In a current comparison of the capacity to innovate among leading industrial countries, Germany was in fourth place behind Switzerland, Singapore and Sweden. The so-called Innovation Indicator is calculated by scientific institutes on behalf of the Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie (BDI, or Federation of German Industry) and the Deutsche Telekom Foundation. 26 industrial countries were included in the 2011 Innovation Indicator study. The comparison included aspects such as R&D investments by companies, state budgets for basic research, education indicators and the legal framework.
According to the study Germany has greatly improved its innovation performance in the past five years. Both public investments in science and research and also the fact that companies had maintained their research efforts unchanged during the crisis contributed to this. The report underlined good networking of the various innovation stakeholders and the lively innovation activities carried out by companies as German strengths. In contrast, the greatest weaknesses were in education, because too few people achieve higher education qualifications.
German companies research more than shown by statistics
August 15th, 2011 | Thema: News
In official rankings of R&D expenditure German companies do not do very well in international comparison. If German companies’ R&D expenditure is considered in relation to sales across all sectors, at 3.5 per cent they are well behind competitors from Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden with 5 per cent each, US companies with 4.8 per cent and Japanese groups with 3.9 per cent. That these figures distort reality has now been proven by the Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin, or German Institute for Economic Research) in a study. According to the researchers, if you compare the R&D intensity of competing companies sector by sector, German companies often do better than competitors from the USA, Japan and Europe.
Thus German companies in the chemicals, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering sectors invest a considerably higher proportion of their sales in R&D than their competitors in the USA, Japan or Europe. The specific mechanical engineering figures: Germany 4.4 per cent, the Rest of Europe, USA and Japan 2.7 per cent each. The German pharmaceutical industry is behind Japan in second place.
The DIW Berlin sees the sector structure as the reason for the distortion and not the R&D output of German companies as such. According to the study Germany fell back in general R&D statistics because there were different sector specialisations in the countries compared. In addition, Germany was only represented with a few large companies in development-intensive sectors, such as broadcasting technology and telecommunications, computer production and science-intensive services.
Optimise supply networks with logistics service providers
July 29th, 2011 | Thema: News
by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas R. Voegele
“Forecasts are difficult, especially when they’re about the future” – is a popular one-liner, originally attributed to Mark Twain. Nevertheless: knowledge of future trends and challenges in logistics decisively contributes to companies being able optimally to prepare. This does not involve exact predictions of future developments. Instead, the emphasis is on basing the necessary assessments for all decisions methodically, weighing up risks, recognising opportunities innovatively and deriving a strategic vision for best practice supply network management, which is understood to be a further development of supply chain management.
But what trends can we expect in supply network management over the next few years? In addition to the well known trends, such as global logistics, customer integration, collaboration management (including value creation partnerships), agile/flexible processes and visibility, companies have to adjust to upcoming strategic development trends. These include value based logistics, infrastructure management and financing concepts, network maturity (performance/training, product ramp-up, total cost of ownership), IT integration (logistics IT and telematics solutions) as well as knowledge management and eBusiness. read more [...]
VDI sees good perspectives for Germany as a technology location
May 30th, 2011 | Thema: News
According to a current study from the Verein Deutscher Ingenieure (VDI, or Association of German Engineers) Germany will continue to remain a leading location worldwide for technology and innovation. To do this future political decisions had to build on technological solutions, continued the study “Technology Location 2020″. Among the sectors in which German leads the VDI includes renewable energies. The study assumes that this sector will invest more than 200 billion euros in Germany by 2020.
“Germany has the potential to become a leading market for resources efficiency. In the face of rising energy and raw materials prices, good perspectives are opening up for German technologies with cross sector expertise,” said VDI President Bruno O. Braun at the presentation of the study. The report also sees a positive future for traditionally strong German sectors, such as the automotive industry and mechanical engineering. The VDI sees one of the most important tasks here is cultivating citizens when there is scepticism towards new technologies and campaigning for greater acceptance of technology.
Good logistics growth but problems in infrastructure
March 14th, 2011 | Thema: News
German logistics growth was extremely lively in the first quarter of 2011. Logistics indicators calculated by the Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy) on behalf of the Bundesvereinigung Logistik (BVL, or German Logistic Association) are significantly higher than the normal growth level of 100 points at a level of 147.8 points in the current quarter (February questionnaire). This picture applies almost identically to logistics providers and to the industries that use its services.
The BVL attributes the fact that that index could not maintain the extremely high level of the last quarter of 2010, with a drop of 4.4 per cent, to a more cautious assessment of the current situation. But industry, retail and logistics providers continue to expect a highly favourable overall development. They are assuming further investments and recruitment will be made. In the Association’s opinion demand for logistics services remains high and the current capacity available in the market remains tight.
In contrast, the logistics sector views the further development of infrastructure in Germany critically. 60 per cent of those surveyed stated that they have examined the “Action Plan Freight Transport and Logistics” intensively. Of this group, 87 per cent believe the measures to build up transport routes and the intermodal system outlined in the Action Plan are insufficient. The BVL describes this as an “alarm signal”, because infrastructure forms the basis of of Germany’s logistics competitiveness.