From traditional production to tomorrow's digital value creation.
The issues surrounding the transformation of value creation range from product design, production systems and their control, to questions of social, economic and ecological sustainability, to the international transferability of digital production concepts, their translation into business models and their impact on the respective socio-technical systems.
As a working group, the experts at the New Production Institute research and evaluate value creation systems at the Laboratory of Production Engineering at Helmut Schmidt University in various research and application projects focusing on Open Source Hardware, Circular Economy, Sustainable Innovation, Sustainable Manufacturing, Communities, and Commons-Based Peer-Production.
Interdisciplinary research
Below, we would like to inform you about our current projects.
If you are interested in further information, please feel free to contact us.
Project Overview
Fab City Hamburg
dtec.bw Fab City Hamburg is a transdisciplinary research and implementation project with the aim of establishing a resilient, circular production infrastructure at the urban level. As part of the global Fab City network, it pursues the vision of manufacturing material goods locally and only exchanging digital construction plans globally. As part of the dtec.bw project, decentralised open labs with digital manufacturing technologies have been set up since 2021, open hardware solutions (including machine kits) have been developed and participatory education formats have been implemented. The underlying approach combines technological sovereignty, open innovation and urban sustainability in a practice-oriented real-world laboratory that aims for scalability and systemic transformation.
LAUDS Factories
The European research project LAUDS (Local, Accessible, Urban, Digital, Sustainable) develops concepts for open, sustainable and digitally networked urban production facilities, known as LAUDS Factories. These small, local production sites use regional resources, promote social participation and contribute to sustainable urban development by combining small-batch production, digital tools and innovation platforms. They offer an alternative to centralised industrial models and create new spaces for innovation, joint development and civil society engagement. The project will run until 2026.
LOCILAMP - The Fab City Lamp
The LOCILAMP – The Fab City Lamp project is testing local, circular and distributed forms of production in response to challenges such as resource scarcity and weak supply chains. The focus is on developing a recyclable luminaire called Shift-Light, which is modular, repairable, designed as open-source hardware and can be manufactured locally. In addition, a model for distributed production is being developed that links design, digital infrastructure and local manufacturing, thus demonstrating how sustainable value creation networks can be established. The DATIpilot project LOCILAMP is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space and will run from 2024 to 2026.
Fab City Technologies
Value creation radar
Interfacer
INTERFACER is an EU-funded research project (2021-2023) aimed at developing an open, decentralised operating system for Fab Cities (local production facilities). It combines open-source hardware, digital product passports and blockchain technologies to enable circular, locally adapted production. Through federated data infrastructures, uniform toolchains and practical workshops, the project contributes to sustainable, self-determined value creation and knowledge networking.
Production Next Door
Production Next Door (ProNeD) is an interdisciplinary real-world laboratory for researching digitised, decentralised production networks using the example of urban furniture production. It combines global open-source development with local manufacturing through data-driven planning and control systems. The aim is to achieve resilient, sustainable and individually adaptable urban production – scientifically underpinned by methods from Industry 4.0, AI and socio-technical systems research.
StartUp Port
Digital4jobs
Digital4Jobs (2021–2023) is a research-based project investigating the role of open labs and open source appropriate technologies (OSAT) in technological empowerment and economic development in Tunisia. It aims to empirically record how locally established open labs as microfactories open up access to digital manufacturing, strengthen knowledge and skills, and thus promote locally anchored, bottom-up economic growth.
Digital teaching
The project researches and designs the sustainable introduction of digitally supported teaching through organizationally embedded blended learning concepts. It combines sociological, organizational, and educational theory approaches with the practical development of open learning infrastructures (e.g., OER, ILIAS) and cooperative implementation at educational institutions.
Places of Incubovation
The PISWI project is researching how open lab concepts can be implemented sustainably in Tunisia in order to establish technological learning spaces and open source hardware prototyping. The aim is to develop an open manufacturing infrastructure and viable business and operating models (e.g. textile technology), supported by participatory research with universities, industry and end users.
Through workshops, train-the-trainer programmes and teaching modules, around 80 participants were trained in OSAT machines and up to 70 students were involved by 2024. The empirical findings on participatory value creation gained in the process serve as a basis for policy recommendations for scaling up. Key message: The project develops and evaluates Open Labs as an experimental infrastructure for digital manufacturing and open-source hardware in Tunisia. It combines practical prototype work with empirical research and institutional cooperation in order to establish a sustainable, participatory innovation landscape.
