Trocellen as project partner of the institute WIN of the RWTH Aachen Double customer integration in the innovation process

The change of paradigms in the automotive industry has already been reflected for several years by different trends.
The consolidation of the supplier industry, the decreasing vertical integration as well as the outsourcing of development services of the automotive manufacturers are just a few examples which especially challenge small and medium-sized businesses.
Additionally many enterprises are situated in a so-called “sandwich position” in which strongly increasing raw material prices face stagnating or only slowly growing sales prices.
Innovative products and solutions, meeting the trends of the automotive industry are a way out of this situation. Focus here is the innovation process.
While leading automotive manufacturers have billions of budget available, the resources of small and medium-sized companies are limited.
This discrepancy of on the one hand increasing requirements to R&D and on the other hand limited means for research activities is dealt with by the research team of the RWTH Aachen in their project DOUBLE customer integration which is sponsored by the foundation industry research.
The goal is to include direct and indirect customers already in the development process to have their requirements considered and integrated right from the beginning into future products.

Trocellen is participating in this project as one of the pilot enterprises.
Analyses within the company as well as workshops with leading enterprises of the automotive industry are conducted, in which the challenges regarding future research and development processes are discussed and solutions defined. The marketing manager of the Trocellen GmbH, Mario Haas, is in close contact with the development team of the WIN Institute and discusses with specialists and managers of the automotive industry about common solution approaches to further enhance the innovation processes. He considers the cooperation with the RWTH Aachen as “(…) great opportunity to not only face the trends and challenges of the automotive industry but to also use it successfully for our own company by combining theory and praxis.”