University professor Dr. Julia C. Arlinghaus will be taking charge of the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg on October 1, 2019. At the same time, she will be taking up the Chair of Production Systems and Automation at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. Her years of expertise in the fields of digitalization, logistics, process engineering and automation as well as her active collaboration with numerous industrial companies make her the ideal appointment for both jobs. Prior to this, she held the Chair of Management for Industrie 4.0 at RWTH Aachen.
The Fraunhofer IFF that will be headed by Prof. Arlinghaus in the future is a technology partner to major industry, Mittelstand and small business in the manufacturing and service sectors as well as the public sector. The research scientists at the internationally active research institute help industry plan, develop, equip and operate work, manufacturing and supply chain systems as well as their supply infrastructures. Priority is given to new digital engineering methods and technologies and their extensive use in the development, manufacture and operation of products and production systems.
Arlinghaus earned her undergraduate degree in engineering management, specializing in manufacturing technology and process engineering, from the University of Bremen and the internationally renowned University of Tokyo, Japan. She earned her doctorate, specializing in business innovation for the integration of intermodal transportation in commercial supply chains, from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland in 2011. She worked as a consultant on operational excellence and lean management at Porsche Consulting until she was appointed Professor of Manufacturing and Supply Chain Network Optimization at Jacobs University Bremen in 2013. She has held the Chair of Management for Industrie 4.0 at RWTH Aachen since August 2017. Her research specializations include the design and implementation of production planning and control systems, the development of artificial intelligence methods, risk management in global production systems, and the design of value chains in and with stakeholders in developing countries.
“Julia Arlinghaus’s research expertise is highly interdisciplinarity and geared toward practice. Her career has been typified by active and close collaboration with numerous established industry and logistics businesses, on the one hand, and with internationally renowned mathematicians, physicists, biologists, computer scientists and psychologists, on the other,” explains Prof. Reimund Neugebauer, President of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. “Her job will now be to continually find new solutions to the most important corporate issues in digitalization and automation. As the institute’s new director, she is both expected and predestined to take the Fraunhofer IFF’s outstanding expertise in robotics, testing and inspection, manufacturing and logistics process design, and technology-based assistance and training to a new level.”
“I am delighted to be permitted to continue the successful development of the Fraunhofer IFF, which is now one of Saxony-Anhalt’s most important research organizations. We also intend to continue providing innovations and impulses to domestic industry and helping businesses transition to digitalization. Well aware of the need for innovations for businesses in flux, we will keep pursuing our principal research in digitalizing and connecting business, increasing resource efficiency in manufacturing, using and converting energy sustainably, and developing intelligent work systems,” explains Arlinghaus, who will be heading the Fraunhofer IFF and holding the Chair of Production Systems and Automation at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg conjointly. She is taking the institute over from Prof. Michael Schenk: “The Fraunhofer IFF’s development since its founding in 1992 up to the present is a fantastic success story in which many have had a hand. Today it is a nationally and internationally sought-after research partner. Having been permitted to head the institute for twenty-five years, I am pleased that such an innovative and qualified colleague as Prof. Julia Arlinghaus will now be taking on this job and keeping the Fraunhofer IFF on its successful course in the future.”
This communication was first published 1 October 2019 by Fraunhofer.
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