After our joint Kickoff at the KIT in Karlsruhe we had our first site visit at Julius Blum GmbH in Austria directly at the Lake Constance. BLUM is an international manufacturer of furniture hardware and has therefore highly automated processes at its production facilities worldwide. With it's 8 sites in Vorarlberg (Austria) it was really impressive to see how a global company, being active in more than 120 countries, can run its major production cost efficiently in Central Europe.

In joint discussion rounds with our consortium together with CLAAS, FACC, HOMAG, MTU Aero Engines, Balluff, PERI, Miele, our host BLUM and our research partner the wbk Institute of Production Science (wbk-KIT) we could collect and define valuable successful practices under the topic of Centralization vs. Autonomy in Global Production Networks.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to all participating companies for their exciting insights, our great discussions and openness.

If you would like to be part of our Global Production Academy 2024, feel free to reach out to our GPA Team!

Read more about our Global Production Academy here.