Consideration of material efficiency in a learning factory

Due to steadily rising energy and raw material prices, material and energy costs are a key competitive factor for companies. The conscious and efficient use of material and energy resources can lead to high savings without large investments. By means of the shortage of resources and the high cost of materials of manufacturing companies, a material efficiency training was developed at the Lower Saxony Learning Factory for Resource Efficiency (NiFaR). The research identified a variety of approaches to increase material efficiency at the level of product development and production. Cross-sectional technologies to increase resource efficiency are well known. However, there is still a large deficit in the general understanding of the process. Therefore, the newly created training to increase material efficiency places special emphasis on lean management and process analysis. The participants learn the way from lean production to material efficient production. The course contents are modular and versatile. In addition to basic knowledge on waste prevention, the focus is still on sustainability, production technologies and the optimization of processes in order to make all processes as material efficient as possible. The theoretical content is taught using practical model examples in the production environment based on a real product.