Fraunhofer opens world-class reman centre in Bayreuth

After three years of preparation and construction, Fraunhofer at Bayreuth University in Germany has opened its new state-of-the-art research and education centre in Bavaria.

Already Europe’s most advanced centre for research into remanufacturing, Bayreuth University and the Fraunhofer Project Group Process Innovation now boasts an EUR 8 million facility that will reaffirm the Bayreuth’s position as a pre-eminent hub for the science-based development of processes and services for the reman industry.

The facilities are set to play a key role in the education and training of students, once they have completed their degrees, and engineers who will contribute to the expansion of remanufacturing knowledge over the coming decades.

Over the coming two months, the staff of 40 engineers and all machinery and equipment will relocate from their current location at the Bayreuth University campus to the new building.

“We’re proud of the fact that this large-scale construction project came in on time – and on budget,” says Dr. Stefan Freiberger who has been in charge of the project from the outset. “For us, the university, and hopefully, for the remanufacturing industry in general, this presents a major step forward in that we’re now able to offer a much broader range of services to remanufacturers in Europe and, indeed, across the world.”

The building comprises 1,000 sq m office space for a staff of 50, 850 sq m workshops and laboratories as well as a number of storage rooms, teaching facilities and meeting rooms. The project has been under way for four years.

In the short and mid-term the new building will focus on the specific areas of service engineering and remanufacturing, resource-efficient production and factory planning and logistics of which the latter aims to deliver sustainable solutions for production hall planning to rationalising the production flows for reman processes etc.