Partnering for success

The Fraunhofer IAO offers a wealth of research services ranging from pre-competitive and contract research to qualification and training measures and specially tailored consulting services for companies and public-sector institutions.

One of the key aspects that makes our work so unique is our fully integrated approach – by ensuring an interdisciplinary mix within our project teams we are able to develop concepts and strategies that combine perspectives from a range of disciplines in order to create extraordinary potential and opportunities. Our close proximity to applied research and our ability to transfer scientifically-based methods and procedures into operational practice provides us with an innovative edge that allows us to solve highly complex issues. The benefits for the companies we work with are primarily measured in terms of innovation, efficiency and quality improvements.

These services are rounded off by an extensive range of qualification and training measures, seminars, forums and workshops, as well as customer-specific training courses. Numerous publications serve to make our knowledge and expertise available to a broad public.

Types of cooperation:

Industry projects and contract research
We carry out a large proportion of our projects on the direct behalf of clients in industry. This brings the diversity of our products and services to the fore, with projects ranging from feasibility, market and trend studies through to system development and implementation, strategy development and process/organizational design.

Publicly funded collaborative projects
We arrange and coordinate project consortia on both a national and international level within the scope of our publicly funded research work. Together with our partners from industry and the scientific community we develop and test innovative methods and processes.

Strategic pre-competitive research
Publicly funded basic research provides the foundations of the contract research we carry out on behalf of clients. To establish this underlying expertise, the Fraunhofer IAO participates in basic research projects run by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In addition, the institute is actively involved in a number of funding programs run by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, including both market-oriented strategic pre-competitive research and business-oriented strategic alliances.