July 2014: MdB is convinced about ERMA

Since five terms Anita Schäfer represents “Südwestpfalz” in the German Bundestag. At invitation of issue-area sustainability of the institute of virtual product engineering (VPE) the experienced, exalted representative of federal politics visited RPTU on the 23rd of July 2014. Beside introduction of institute, research and teaching the career politician showed a big interest at the issue to the joint project ERMA.

Why optimizing constantly the wrong thing instead of doing directly the right thing? How products of tomorrow become resources of over morrow describes Michael Braungart fascinating and clear in his work »cradle to cradle«. Braungarts easy credo at this is to put intelligence finally at the beginning in product engineering. The point is also to form whole lifespan of a product. According to this waste management belongs to develop and design assignment. The fact that material will be recycled doesn’t makes it automatically ecofriendly especially not if recycling is not explicitly scheduled at fabrication. An important condition is the knowledge of all ingredients of the products, underlying technical processes and intelligent ahead planning of sustainable product systems over their whole life’s journey.  

These challenges were motivations for the joint project ERMA of the research group product engineering at the center of commercial vehicle technology at RPTU. Four professorships of the faculty engineering and process technology worked since then together to develop new concepts and methods for increasing energy and resource efficiency on the example of a mobile excavator of the company Volvo Construction Equipment (Location: Konz, Rheinland-Pfalz). The research project is supported by “Stiftung Rheinland-Pfalz für Innovation“.

The member of German parliament traced interestedly research activities of the scientists in Kaiserslautern in the past years. She was delight to experience now newest trends in research context on site at thirst hand. 

Goal of the joint project was development of innovative concepts and technologies for mobile machines in the future. However therefore doesn’t mattered the big idea of one single but rather practically orientated, meticulous work on numerous details like in the areas engine, energy management, friction and holistic view through a life cycle management. Besides optimizing mechanical-hydraulic concepts new highly efficient mechatronical concepts were developed. Thereby all-up energy efficiency of recent developments was examined as part of a prospective analysis. For example this means that not only conservation of energy and resources starting with raw material production over to production right up to disposal were analyzed but rather fuel-intensive work in specific commission scenario, as well as choice of energy source. Evaluation shows results on basis of an intellectual product thus the digital model in early stage of development. It won’t be wasted any resources but technical circuits of future solution provident evaluated. On the end of the project are now on the plan practical concepts and methods which are judged on their performance and which could find use on optimization of a sustainable product. To reach the goals an ample working program and different development know-how were necessary which couldn’t be provided by only one chair. 

At Trials under real conditions locally at fabricator energy and resource intensity were ascertained against the backdrop of high use variability of experimental vehicle. Thereby were typical company scenarios of mobile working machine landscaping, excavating, dig and load, transformation of a weight and vehicle operation as commitment analyzed and inside of Life Cycle Model valid pictured.

„Knowledge transfer and synergies as an essential contribution to protection of sustainability and sustainable development of our federal state Rhineland-Palatinate . . . excellent”, praised Anita Schäfer MdB.