Interview Prof. Julia Arlinghaus

Looking at sustainability from the economic perspective is what Prof. Julia Arlinghaus, Director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation IFF in Magdeburg, recommends.

Professor Arlinghaus, are ecology and economics mutually exclusive?

Arlinghaus: Anything but. We're living at the most exciting time of all in which companies are outdoing each other in the race for climate neutrality. There are now funds that support green technologies, funds that support sustainability. Ecology has become a criterion for investors.

Will we consumers have to give things up?

The great thing is that everyone has the freedom to behave as they wish as consumers. And what I’m finding is that many younger people in particular are actively and very consciously choosing a new kind of product. As a professor, I experience spirited discussions with my students about whether we really need such services as same-day and same-hour delivery, which are still very resource-intensive at this time, and whether business people ought to be assuming more responsibility.

So how do we reconcile the contradictions in a new sustainability?

With the economic perspective. Our businesses are operating in largely saturated markets, after all. At the same time, we have large segments of the global population, several billion people in all, really living in poverty. If we manage to manufacture and market products adapted to their circumstances, then we could turn this into a classic win-win situation. On the one hand, we’re fighting poverty. On the other hand, we’re opening increasingly attractive markets for our businesses. Making that sustainable in the sense of social sustainability, however, necessitates more than simply copying and exporting our business models. We have to find solutions that integrate people locally in manufacturing and supply chains. Then this will generate jobs. Then this will generate education. Then this will generate prosperity.

Back to Europe und Germany. How can we go easy on the wallet and preserve the environment at the same time?

New technologies – whether they be sensor systems, artificial intelligence or robotics – help us make processes more efficient, of course. We are minimizing mileage. That saves energy. We can also improve the quality of our manufacturing processes, though. Just recently, we were able to reduce rejects by thirty percent at a company by employing artificial intelligence and quality inspection integrated in the manufacturing process. That saves real money and resources! Another recent project was about optimizing energy use in a foundry. We developed new technologies for that, but also reorganized production planning and control. This enabled us to cut carbon dioxide emissions by as much as eighty percent and energy expenditures by as much as sixty percent. In other words, we’re no longer just optimizing to maximize speed. We're introducing another dimension that enables us to optimize manufacturing by sourcing renewable energy, for instance. Incidentally, we use the same technologies that help us make factories more efficient to do this.

Professor Arlinghaus, you sound remarkably optimistic.

I really am. Personally, however, I want us never to lose sight of the social component whenever we are talking about sustainability. It is important, especially with regard to digitalization, to remember that we're always dealing with people. We have to take them along with us.

You are making yourself the advocate of – pardon the overused expression – the human factor. How do you manage to make your case for this soft factor to businesses in increasingly hard times?

To be honest, I never have to convince any company at all. On the contrary, I’m seeing industry coming to us with these issues. At our institute, we have staff members in every unit who have specialized in learning processes and adaptation processes. In my experience, businesses are grateful for this service, which we provide along with the technology.

Researching for the future without losing sight of the present?

At Fraunhofer, we have to be thinking five, ten and maybe even more years ahead, of course. But we have to remember that the reality of people's lives develops more slowly. A factory stands as long as eighty, sometimes one hundred years. Talking about visionary ideas isn't enough there. We also have to take traditions, historical processes and established structures into account. That’s the only way we’ll reach the German Mittelstand. We have to bring people and businesses on board wherever they are really situated.

Where do you see major challenges in the future?

This balancing act between the present and the future is one. I have been dealing with supply chain risk management in my research for many years. We have to become more responsive and resilient to disruptions and fluctuations. We have to envision our energy and manufacturing systems collectively – that's an ecological and economic path into the future.