The Four Labs of the Interdisciplinary Management Factory (IMF)

 

Four labs are to be established based on the results of the IMP Project House:

Sustainable Prosumer Lab

The lab researches topics in which production and consumption in the value creation process are closely linked . It also researches questions related to economic, ecological, and social sustainability.

The primary goal of the lab is to provide an important contribution to the formation of sustainable production systems and the development of sustainable projects and product use concepts for companies, consumers, and society at both the national and international level. The term prosumer expressely contains the active, creative, and often multiple roles of the encompassing identity of producers and users. A crucial concern of the lab is the analysis of the introduction and expansion of innovative technology and the modelling, implementation, and management of the related process designs, markets, and norms. A central and collective research focus of the involved professorships includes the evaluation of long-lasting investments. Further research projects highlight the development of sustainable energy and mobility solutions, under the particular consideration of the link between production and consumption (for example distributed energy production and electric vehicles). The lab actively looks for collaborations with other RWTH Aachen institutions (for example E.ON Energy Research Center) and externally (for example JARA-Energy) in the fields of energy, mobility, and environment.

Business & Behavioral Metrics Lab

This lab aims at the development of a series of techniques for a radically new concept in experimental economic research. The idea is to analyze and quantify individual behavior in organizations and markets that is supported with new technological measuring methods under controlled laboratory conditions. Different work environments in organizations will be replicated as realistically as possible through collaboration with other disciplines and their technical expertise.

Business Analytics Lab

Companies can only obtain competitive advantages on the basis of knowledge and information in a modern knowledge-based society and economy. Electronic (and often real time) data are in abundance, which contains an enormous potential for better decision-making. However radical new approaches are required for the productive analysis of data. The lab's focus is fundamental research. Typical topics are models and methods for extremely large and complex optimization problems, the handling of data uncertainty and incompleteness, and decision aids in new fields such as healthcare, etc. This lab will closely cooperate with the Optimization Group (mathematics) and the Algorithms Group (computer sciences) and find applications in diverse engineering fields at RWTH Aachen. One of the lab's crucial goals is to open the School of Business and Economics to the engineering and natural sciences.

Management Technologies Lab

This lab's aim is to develop a series of modular methods and tools, that can be be directly applied by researchers from engineering and natural sciences, in order to supplement technical problem solving with suitable economic and management know-how. The lab builds on the recognition that today's research projects on large global challenges must contain an economic component in order to gain a better understanding of operative efficiencies, behavior, incentives, and market chances. The goal of the lab is the creation of a structure in order to shape corresponding collaboration more efficiently and scalable. The lab will dovote itself to research in the fields of technology transfer, technology oriented entreprenuership, and innovation marketing.