27 March 2023
Founder’s Competition for Digital Innovation: Universität Hamburg Spin-Off Recognized
Photo: Wolfgang Borrs
The PLANNINGIO team headed by Dr. Justus Bonz, Dr. Nikolai Heinrichs, Dr. Matthes Koch, Dr. Markus Mickein, and Dr. Nils Roemer has developed a software solution for the digitalization and automation of production planning. This involves precise and detailed digital imaging of complex production systems. Using so-called “digital twins,” as well as special optimization algorithms, production plans are created for specific production scenarios.
This enables companies to determine realizable and cost-effective production plans at the touch of a button, which also leads to less stressed personnel, greater business resilience in the face of worker shortages, and more environmentally friendly production.
The founders were all research associates in the Faculty of Business Administration and did research and their doctorates on topics in the field of mathematical optimization. The planning software is also based on research findings from doctoral work conducted at Universität Hamburg. PLANNINGIO was supported by the University’s Knowledge Exchange Agency and the Management Transfer Lab in the Faculty of Business Administration. It also received funding from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action.
The University’s president, Prof. Dr. Hauke Heekeren, is delighted about the award for PLANNINGIO: “I congratulate the Universität Hamburg team on their award—it’s a great success! The founder’s prize underscores the University’s commitment to facilitating knowledge-based entrepreneurship and to transferring research findings to the economy. As a University of Excellence, we are proud that our research and development work contributes to the founding of innovative enterprises. The digital project PLANNINGIO is an excellent example of successful knowledge exchange from research to practice and it exemplifies our ‘twin transformation’ strategy. I thank everyone involved, the Knowledge Exchange Agency, and the Faculty of Business Administration at Universität Hamburg.”
The prize awarded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action is worth €7,000 and includes coaching, seminars, and access to entrepreneurial networks. It is designed to foster entrepreneurship in Germany, especially for innovative and technology-based entrepreneurial projects. PLANNINGIO was praised for, among other things, creating software that can depict complex processes in a single tool and that can be adapted for the most varied processes without difficulty. This, according to the judges, gives companies multiple possibilities for optimizing their multi-staged production processes—an ever-more urgent issue thanks to exploding energy prices and the increasing importance of sustainability.