Research
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Research project Fab City (dtec.bw)
Hamburg as a real laboratory

Research project Fab City (dtec.bw)

Research on the Fab City is taking place along different use cases with the aim of investigating the conditions of sustainable urban production.

Decentralized digital production for urban value creation

Within the Fab City research project, funded by dtec.bw, an interdisciplinary team is working on the development of the OpenLab Starter Kit and the establishment and research of OpenLabs in various contexts (including OpenLab textile, OpenLab mobile, OpenLab port, OpenLab medical). In these Living Labs, different urban production contexts are investigated with the involvement of local people. In this way, people are reached in their usual learning or working environment, e.g. in schools, at trade fairs, in vocational education and training or in companies. The scalable workshop offerings are initially intended to be low-threshold for getting started and getting to know the Open Lab idea, and to offer the opportunity to gain practical experience in digital manufacturing.

Can there be a city in which you can make (almost) everything yourself?

As part of the interdisciplinary research project Fab City, a new type of urban value creation is being established and investigated in the Hamburg metropolitan region by means of decentralized and open production workshops, so-called Open Labs. More than 30 research partners from various disciplines will work together until December 2024 to answer research questions on the topic of Fab City, using the Fab City Hamburg as an application context.

The related issues are the subject of various research fields, such as engineering, economics, law, social and educational sciences, logistics and blockchain technology, and urban planning. In the project, an interdisciplinary research team will therefore investigate new theoretical foundations of decentralized digital and networked urban value creation. Research partners of Helmut Schmidt University are Kühne Logistics University, HafenCity University Hamburg, Hamburg University of Technology and Bucerius Law School. The findings derived from this research will offer society the possibility of global product development and local manufacturing combined with new, individualized and sustainable innovation, production and education formats in the future. The Labs will be implemented in cooperation with local stakeholders and research partners in Hamburg. Further cooperations for the implementation of the labs have been concluded with partners from the port economy, industry and business development.

The production technologies developed within the Fab City project are to be accessible worldwide through open project documentation, enable maximum scaling and dissemination through self-replication and modular construction, and require only minimal costs through the Appropriate Design approach. Knowledge transfer is to take place in the form of project-based (build) workshops in the Fab Labs or Open Labs.

Project partners

New Production Institute
Helmut-Schmidt-Universität
Open Lab Hamburg
Fab City Hamburg Verein
HafenCity University Hamburg
Kühne Logistics University
Technische Universität Hamburg
Bucerius Law School

Project funding

dtec.bw
New Production Institute Laboratorium Fertigungstechnik an der Helmut-Schmidt-Universität OpenLab an der Helmut-Schmidt-Universität

Publications

Omer, M.; Kaiser, M.; Moritz, M.; Buxbaum-Conradi, S.; Redlich, T. et al.: Democratizing Manufacturing – Evaluating the Potential of Open Source Machine Tools as Drivers of Sustainable Industrial Development in Resource Constrained Contexts. In: Herberger, D.; Hübner, M. (Eds.): Proceedings of the Conference on Production Systems and Logistics: CPSL 2022. Hannover : publish-Ing., 2022, S. 256-266. DOI
Mariscal-Melgar, J.C.; Omer, M.; Moritz, M.; Hijma, P.; Redlich, T. et al.: Distributed Manufacturing: A High-Level Node-Based Concept for Open Source Hardware Production. In: Herberger, D.; Hübner, M. (Eds.): Proceedings of the Conference on Production Systems and Logistics: CPSL 2022. Hannover : publish-Ing., 2022, S. 795-808. DOI

Contact persons

Dr. phil. Jana Koppe

Dr. phil. Jana Koppe

Head of Industry Partner Management

dtec.bw

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jens P. Wulfsberg

Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jens P. Wulfsberg

Project Lead

dtec.bw

Dr. rer. nat. Sonja Buxbaum-Conradi

Dr. rer. nat. Sonja Buxbaum-Conradi

Head of Research Management

dtec.bw

Dr.-Ing. Tobias Redlich

Dr.-Ing. Tobias Redlich

Research

Helmut-Schmidt-Universität