Press releasses
Award of the 2009 INPRO prize on 27 November 2009
Berlin, 27 November 2009 – This Friday, INPRO awarded prizes to the winners, who submitted papers on the topic of "Energy and Resource-Efficient Production" at the German Museum of Technology in Berlin. To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the Gesellschaft für fortgeschrittene Produktionssysteme first awarded the INPRO prize in September 2008. The objective of the prize is to honour new ideas and trendsetting developments in the field of production engineering, and to advance innovative, creative thinking.
Dr Jörg Engelmann was honoured for the best dissertation. The Director of Production Engineering of the Volkswagen brand, Volker Germann, handed over the prize money of 7,000 Euros. He also awarded a prize in the amount of 3,000 Euros for the best degree/Master's thesis to Jan Peter Rischard. Dr Günter Spur, PhD, from the Technical University of Berlin held the laudatory speech. In his welcome address, Dr Gerd Eßer, INPRO's Managing Director, emphasised that "We must remain a global innovation leader in production engineering in the future as well. Because energy and resource efficiency are becoming increasingly important, we must also be the best in this field: the green factory must come from Germany. Therefore, we have to do everything to promote technological progress. We want the 2009 INPRO prize to make a small contribution in this sector."
Applications were received until June and until October the submitted work was judged by high-ranking experts in the field at INPRO. This group included: Dr Dieter Stegmüller, Director of Production and Materials Engineering for PK/PWT at Daimler Sindelfingen, Volker Germann from Volkswagen, Juan G. Ximénez-Carrillo Gerber, Director of BASF Coatings AG, Dr Rolf Geiger, PhD, Managing Director of ThyssenKrupp Presta (Ret.) and consultant to the Board, Ralf-Michael Franke, Director of the Business Unit for Industrial Automation Systems Nuremberg of Siemens AG, Dr Gerd Eßer as well as Dr Günter Spur, PhD.
INPRO is an innovation enterprise backed by the German vehicle manufacturers Volkswagen and Daimler as well as the supplier firms BASF, Siemens and ThyssenKrupp and the Federal State of Berlin. INPRO researches and develops innovative production systems for the automotive industry. One of the objectives is to transfer basic research results in the field of production engineering to partner firm applications. INPRO lives off good ideas and has set itself the objective of supporting young engineering scientists.