Fraunhofer Institutes

Software is at the core of innovative systems and sustainably ensures the future of our society and our economy. For almost 20 years we have been involved in research and collaboration with our partners to develop trend setting key technologies for tomorrow. Leading companies as well as hidden champions - all around the world - are relying on our expertise and independence. We are convinced that the interconnection of systems and sensors in collaborative, smart ecosystems will deter- mine our future Quality assurance will be of crucial importance in this regard, and the increasing system complexity will become an ever greater challenge for any company. We understand your requirements, explore new solutions, speak the language of business, and set an example in terms of practical orientation. Only those who know both sides can really drive innovations. Our scientific excellence offers you the added value of being one step ahead of the market. This is what our promise of delivering quality stands for. Fraunhofer IESE is one of 66 institutes and research units of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft. Together they have a major impact on shaping applied research in Europe and contribute to Germany's competitiveness in international markets.

Competence Areas:

Embedded Systems

Hidden in transportation systems, medical devices, consumer goods, and almost all other technical products, embedded systems are performing essential tasks that make our daily lives safer and more comfortable. Every year, more than three billion embedded components and devices are manufactured, incorporating 98% percent of all microprocessors built. Embedded systems are omnipresent, and our modern economy and society would be unable to survive without them.

The requirements on the reliability and functional safety of such systems are correspondingly high. Failures can rarely be tolerated - particularly when such failures might jeopardize people or the environment. At the same time, the complexity of these systems is increasing ever faster. They are tightly interconnected and developed in a distributed manner. At the same time, they must also fulfill numerous, sometimes contradictory, functional and non-functional requirements.

In order to meet these challenges, the division "Embedded Systems" focuses on innovative methods and techniques for developing highly reliable and safe systems in a cost-efficient manner.

Process Management

Processes are the central core of software and systems engineering. They are an important prerequisite for managing large software and IT projects and serve as accelerators for the successful realization of software innovations. High product quality is the result of high-quality processes.

Mastering and improving processes is a great challenge. In order to positively affect products and business goals, processes need to be goal-oriented, efficient, and verifiable, and must be based on solid experience. We support organizations in implementing domain-specific requirements on modern process management as well as in developing and testing software-based innovations. Our customers are thus primarily companies from the following domains: "Health Care and Medical Technology", "Banks and Insurance Companies", as well as "Automotive and Transportation Systems".

Custom-tailored process technologies, goal-oriented measurement processes, systematic data management, and innovations that make use of ambient technologies are core components of our service portfolio, which focuses on linking processes and their intended effects.

Information Systems

Modern information systems and interactive systems are becoming ever more complex. Hype topics such as service orientation or cloud computing as well as increasingly mature technologies including those in the area of mobile end devices further increase the complexity of these systems. The challenges that our customers often face are the result of multi-dimensional project settings with many stakeholders, interests, and systems as well as the complex workflows of one or several networked companies. Other typical challenges include complex user interfaces, ensuring and verifying required system qualities, and last but not least, the multitude of variants and configurations of our customers' systems.

The division Information Systems develops innovative methods and solutions for the development of complex information systems and interactive systems. In order to offer an immediate added value, we apply our methods directly during our customers' product development and/ or transfer our methods and solutions to our customers. These include organizations that use software solutions for their business processes, e.g., from the banking and insurance sector or from the domain of medical IT systems, organizations from such areas as public administration and defense, as well as software developing companies (both large corporations and SMEs).