The scientific core of the cluster is the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM. Industry participants include DaimlerChrysler AG, the Volvo Group, John Deere, Robert Bosch GmbH, Haldex brake products GmbH, MB-technology GmbH and Schmitz Cargobull AG.
The project has €10 million funding, with Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and the state of Rheinland-Pfalz each contributing €3 million and the balance coming from the industrial partners.
The overall objective is to create tighter integration between development and manufacturing processes with the installed systems for managing and monitoring of commercial vehicles.
Within the cluster Fraunhofer ITWM will mainly concentrate on processes for virtual product development. Currently, projects are running at the institute with commercial vehicle manufacturers from the region, focusing on Vehicle Simulation under Operating Stress. This includes calculations on the lifespan of a tractor-trailer axle in which different axle connections are compared before prototypes are built. Meanwhile, Fraunhofer IESE is developing zero-defect software for development and product planning.
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