Research Projects

On April 1, 2020, Fraunhofer IML, in cooperation with its project partners IHPC Singapore, Kimberly-Clark Singapore and TÜV SÜD Digital Service GmbH, launched the "SuppliedTrust" project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

The objective of "SuppliedTrust" is to develop a blockchain-based approach to monitor quality in supply chains and production processes of unregulated products. The production of baby wipes by the company Kimberly Clark was chosen as a representative example. Baby wipes are not regulated in many countries, with the result that product quality and production processes vary significantly between individual suppliers. "SuppliedTrust" aims to ensure trust in the product quality of unregulated products and thus create added value for consumers and participants in supply chains. Fraunhofer IML sets up a secure blockchain infrastructure and provides the project partners with an interface to access the compromise-proof data.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML along with eleven project partners are receiving funding of around 10 million euros from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) for the joint research project "Financial Big Data Cluster" (FBDC). The project is intended to advance applications based on artificial intelligence (AI) for the financial sector.

Launched in January 2021, the project seeks to pave the way for data-driven business models in the financial sector across Europe. To this purpose, it enables companies, traditional financial institutions, start-ups, public actors and research institutions to access relevant financial market data.

Within the framework of the project, Fraunhofer IML will be responsible for the sub-project "Stable Supply Chain Finance" with the participation of the Fraunhofer Institute for Software and Systems Engineering ISST. Together with partners from industry and science, data from the real, physical and corresponding financial supply chains will be made available for the FBDC.

A concrete use case "Pay-per-Use Supply Chain Finance" will accompany the project over the entire three-year term in order to make the diverse data streams and technologies in complex value creation networks usable for innovative financial supply chain management applications.

The SafeFBDC project was initiated by the Hessian Ministry of Economics, Energy, Transport and Housing and is part of the BMWi innovation competition "Artificial Intelligence as a Driver for Economically Relevant Ecosystems". In addition, it represents a central use case for the financial sector within the GAIA-X initiative initiated by the Federal Government, which is working on the development of a cross-thematic, European data infrastructure. In addition to Fraunhofer IML, the partners in the project consortium include the Frankfurt TechQuartier, Deloitte Consulting GmbH and Deutsche Börse AG. Other partners from science and industry, including well-known credit institutions, have already agreed to support the project.

Within the project "Blockchain in the EJOT Supply Chain", Fraunhofer IML is developing blockchain-based platform concepts for the deployment of a contract service provider platform and a dynamic discounting platform. In close cooperation with the SME group EJOT, Fraunhofer IML analyses current processes along EJOT's supply chain and develops target concepts for the use of blockchain-based platform solutions.

The development of a contract service provider platform based on blockchain technology enables systematic data collection that creates transparency for all production orders. This is intended to sustainably reduce the manual reconciliation and coordination effort for EJOT and its contract service providers.

At the start of the project, the current processes at EJOT and selected contract service providers were recorded, which provided insight into the current information exchange. Based on this, a blockchain-based platform concept was developed, which is linked to the existing process and is extended by the advantages of a blockchain solution. Based on the jointly developed concept, a blockchain-based contract service provider platform can be developed in the further course of the project.

The Dynamic Discounting Platform enables EJOT to establish closer customer ties and sustainably strengthen its own supply chain. Suppliers benefit from early payment and can thus increase their liquidity. The platform also improves the processing of individual invoice transactions, as both EJOT and its suppliers can access and react to approved invoices more quickly via a web-based application.

In the first steps, the actual payment process at EJOT was recorded and then evaluated. Based on the results, the potential of a blockchain-based dynamic discounting platform was analysed and simulated for different variants.

At the "European Blockchain Institute in NRW" (Blockchain Europe), the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics IML will decisively advance blockchain technology together with companies and other research institutions. NRW Minister for Economics and Digitization Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart presented the funding commitment of 7.7 million Euro to the institute directors of the Fraunhofer IML.

"With the project to set up the Blockchain Institute, a unique Europe-wide institute is being created at Fraunhofer IML that will advance digitization in science and practice. Blockchain as a key technology has the potential to make data exchange tamper-proof and to automate a multitude of processes in the value chain and to autonomize them in the future," Prof. Michael Henke, Director of the Fraunhofer IML, describes the significance of the technology. As transparent and decentralized registers for transactions, blockchains play a key role in the digitization of the economy thus making the sensible use of numerous other technologies possible in the first place.

The research at the European Blockchain Institute therefore complements the work of the Dortmund scientists and ties in directly with the existing research infrastructure: "Blockchain technology will only develop its full impact in the next few years and this will take place in logistics. In interaction with digital platforms, artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things, a new and self-organizing 'Silicon Economy' is emerging. We are glad to have brought the European Blockchain Institute into the heart of European logistics," explains Prof. Michael ten Hompel, Executive Director of the Fraunhofer IML.

In the coming years, the scientists will work on open source solutions in the form of software, hardware and business models around blockchains. They will develop these for and with companies of all sizes. Especially in logistics and supply chain management, many different, economically independent partners work closely together, but they do not necessarily trust each other. The focus of research is therefore on open and holistic solutions that can be used by all players in the market. In this way, complete logistics chains are to be connected digitally from end to end.

"We are on the verge of a new stage in the digitization of the economy. Technologies such as blockchain, the Internet of Things or artificial intelligence are fundamentally changing business and opening up entirely new opportunities for companies. The European Blockchain Institute will decisively advance the logistics industry in North Rhine-Westphalia in particular and also make an important contribution beyond the borders of our state," emphasizes NRW Economics and Digitization Minister Pinkwart.

The Blockchain Europe project consortium consists of the Dortmund Fraunhofer Institutes IML and ISST as well as the Chair of Corporate Logistics and the Chair of Materials Handling and Warehousing at the Technical University of Dortmund. 25 employees are to be employed at the institute in the future. Following the project period, it is to be perpetuated  as a sustainable and permanent institution.

On September 2, 2019 the project "Blockchain Living Lab Rheinisches Revier" was started in Düsseldorf. The state government of North Rhine-Westphalia is funding the establishment of the Blockchain Living Lab for the testing of practical applications of Blockchain technology with 1.2 million euros over a period of one year.

Prof. Dr. Andreas Pinkwart, Minister for Economics, Innovation, Digitisation and Energy of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, presented the official funding decision to the project consortium consisting of the Fraunhofer Institutes for Applied Information Technology FIT (Bonn), Material Flow and Logistics IML (Dortmund), the Institute for Scientific-Technical Trend Analyses INT (Euskirchen), the RWTH Aachen, the Ruhr University Bochum and the University of Applied Sciences Gelsenkirchen.

The sectors of energy, logistics, services of general interest, finance, industry 4.0 as well as the associated business models prevailing in the Rhenish territory will be investigated in the Blockchain Living Lab with regard to the potential of blockchain applications. The aim is, among other things, to promote and further develop digital innovations in a temporally and geographically limited environment. Here, new technologies and business models are put to the test and validated with relevant actors in the state of NRW.

Supply chains in modern production processes today consist of complete value chains that contain multitude of suppliers, manufacturers, traders, customs authorities, logistics and financial service providers. Tracking flows of goods across the entire supply chain is currently virtually impossible, not to mention cross-company recording of supply chain events.

Trackchain is a blockchain-based infrastructure for storing events and controlling the release of event data to authorized users. This means that every event stored in Trackchain is stored traceably and indisputably. In this way, any sequences of events can be recorded in a traceable and manipulation-protected manner - even independently of supply chains. The possible application scenarios range from audit logs, which are created during the administration of a technical system, to the implementation of "clearing houses", which record business transactions such as billable transactions, to the tracking of events in supply chains.

The joint project with the Fraunhofer Institutes AISEC, FIT and IIS combines two key technologies for the first time: a track & trace system based on modern sensor technology and the tamper-proof functionalities of blockchain technology. The trackchain thus enables real-time product tracking with simultaneous seamless, trustworthy product traceability along the entire supply chain.

Starting in September 2018, the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML) and PIEL will jointly develop a blockchain-based solution for cross-company electronic data exchange that promises enormous savings potential through the reduction of interface costs and the seamless, transparent automation of order processing.

Dortmund, September 2018

The cross-company electronic data exchange as well as the communication between different systems and IoT devices currently represent a major challenge, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Many processes are still processed and exchanged analogously and paper-based, require manual input or corrections and tie up operational resources in this way.

As soon as SMEs want to securely exchange data with each other, they are faced with a major challenge. The existing infrastructure is often very heterogeneous, many types of interfaces exist in parallel and there are hardly any cross-industry solutions. Blockchain technology can be a way out of this problem. It is cost-effective, individually adaptable to the needs of SMEs and yet secure. The technical retailer PIEL and the Fraunhofer IML are working together on a pilot project to develop the basis for this important field of application of blockchain technology using the example of PIEL's customer Warsteiner.

Kickoff for the research project “Planning and control of value networks by integration of smart objects and smart finance approaches (SOFiA)”

Dortmund, February 01^st 2016.

Within a given value network, delays occur during the planning process of a sea freight shipment. The sea freight container will not reach the planned vessel in time. Replanning, rebooking and the corresponding payments have to take place on short notice. This scenario describes the classic and time-consuming daily life in the logistics and supply chain management. Via innovative smart objects and smart finance technologies, the container itself becomes the dispatcher. It recognizes delays, analyses action alternatives and chooses the best transportation route. Subsequently, it assigns a carrier (logistics service provider)   and handles the payment via mobile Business-to-Business (B2B) payment technologies in real-time. The logistical objects are equipped with all the logistical and financial information to allow for a completely autonomous decentralized decision and transaction. In addition to this transport case of application, the SOFiA-project also focuses on the fleet control of harvesting machines for the transport and storage of agricultural commodities.

Therefore, new industry 4.0-based management approaches regarding the self-control and self-organization of logistics, production and the appropriate tasks of payment transactions and supply chain finance are addressed by the SOFiA research project. It is part of the subsidy program “Service innovation by means of digitalisation” by the German federal department for education and research. The project’s objective is the improvement of the process handling within complex manufacturing and logistics networks through integration of smart objects and digital B2B smart finance approaches.

The project was initiated in November of 2015 and has a total duration of three years with the project consortium consisting of the agricultural machinery manufacturer CLAAS E-Systems KgaA mbH & Co KG, the logistics service provider Ekol Logistik GmbH, the financial IT solutions provider Wincor Nixdorf International GmbH and the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (IML).

The consortium partners’ subgoals, aligned with the project objective, are:

• Development of management procedures for industry 4.0 based on decision-making methods for intelligent logistics objects for the autonomous logistical and financial control within complex value networks (Fraunhofer IML)
• Intelligent machine fleet control by means of autonomous logistics objects from a manufacturer’s point of view (CLAAS)
• Intelligent logistics control by means of autonomous logistics objects from a transport service provider’s point of view (Ekol)
• Innovative, decentralized B2B payment methods for autonomously operating logistics units within value networks (Wincor Nixdorf)

On behalf of the consortium leader Fraunhofer IML, the project is headed by Prof. Dr. Michael Henke (Institute director) and the department heads Marco Motta (Supply Chain Engineering) and Dr. Axel T. Schulte (Procurement & Finance in Supply Chain Management). Additional information on the research project will be published at www.sofia-projekt.de.