Fraunhofer Institutes

Activities in Brazil

The Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK has been cooperating with the Laboratório de Sistemas Computacionais para Projeto e Manufatura (SCPM) of the Brazilian Universidade Metodista de Piracicaba (UNIMEP) since 2005. The goal of the cooperation is to open up Brazilian markets for production-related know-how from Germany by strengthening the power of innovation and the productivity of the local industry.

The partners aim at initiating cooperative projects with Brazilian companies in order to achieve this goal. In the long run, a joint application center will be installed in Piracicaba. There, scientists from both cooperating institutes will conduct application-oriented research for the Brazilian industry following the Fraunhofer model.

One result of the collaboration so far is a cooperation agreement between Fraunhofer IPK and the Brazilian Associação Brasileira da Indústria de Máquinas e Equipamentos ABIMAQ – equivalent to the German Engineering Federation VDMA – which is about to be signed.
Currently the SCPM and Fraunhofer IPK work together with the Institute for Machine Tools and Factory Management IWF of the Technische Universität Berlin on two application-oriented research projects which are related to the BRAGECRIM research association.

BRAGECRIM – Brazilian German Collaborative Research Initiative in Manufacturing Technology – is an initiative by the German Research Foundation DFG and its Brazilian partner organizations CAPES, CNPq and FINEP which fosters cooperation projects between German and Brazilian scientists.