21st Century Manufacturing: The Role of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program by Charles W. Wessner

Author:Charles W. Wessner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2014-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

THE FRAUNHOFER IN CONTEXT

Most foreign observers who have studied the Fraunhofer in detail emphasize that it cannot be understood outside of the context in which it operates—that is, “the culture, history, and innovation infrastructures of Germany”—and that “an indiscriminate attempt to apply the model wholesale would be inadvisable even if it were practically possible and fiscally affordable.”131 Significantly in this regard, a number of Fraunhofer institutes have been established outside of Germany but “these have not achieved the success of the institutes in Germany.”132

In Germany the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft exists in a dense, knowledge-intensive, highly interconnected ecosystem of universities, institutes of applied research, technology intensive companies, and sophisticated trade and industrial associations. The roots of this system can be traced back for centuries, and reflect longstanding German traditions of craftsmanship, the relentless pursuit of academic excellence in the sciences and engineering, and systematic application of scientific knowledge in the commercial realm. Germany pioneered many of the practices which underpin today’s knowledge-based global economy, and until the early Twentieth Century was the acknowledged world leader in science and the translation of scientific knowledge into commercial products. Despite the massive discontinuity of the period 1914-50, the basic elements of the German scientific industrial system which emerged in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Century are still observable in Germany today. “Despite the political regime breaks in 1933 and 1945 and the Second World War, the German [public research system] showed a high degree of institutional continuity.”133

The key elements of the German innovation system are a dual system of education and training which marries the development of academic and practical competencies; layered and decentralized governmental structures which support scientific research over long time horizons; an industrial tradition featuring the systematic application of science to the development and constant improvement of products and processes; and industrial and science organizations which promote rationalization, constrain competition in favor of collaboration, and facilitate the broad diffusion of technology. These elements of the German innovation system were in place long before the Fraunhofer first opened its doors in 1949, and the place which applied research institutes like Fraunhofer were expected to occupy within the system were well understood throughout German society by the time Fraunhofer was founded. Today, many well-educated Germans understand what Fraunhofer is, what it does, and where it fits in the German economic system. Foreign assessments of the German innovation system sometimes conclude that while German successes are admirable, German methods cannot readily be transplanted because of the singular character of the German system.134

Scientific and Technical Education

German universities emerged as centers for “serious research and scholarship in science and technology long before their British and American counterparts.”135 In 1820, Justus von Liebig, a chemistry professor at the University of Giessen, developed a teaching method based on a professor-supervised laboratory staffed by graduate students “which in many ways served as a model for laboratories ever since.”136 By the end of the Nineteenth Century, German universities were “providing the best technical and scientific training in the world.”137 German universities

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