’Keeping an eye on processes’

Pioneer: Pierangelo Gröning is a member of Empa's Directorate and established research into Advanced Manufacturing at Empa. Image: Empa - Pierangelo Gröning, President of the Advanced Manufacturing Technology Transfer Center (AM-TTC) Alliance and Empa's Research Commission and member of Empa's Directorate, explains the research institute's role in AM research. What does the buzzword Advanced Manufacturing actually mean? What is so new about it? - Today, modern materials science involves more than just the development of materials. As long as the novel material cannot be processed, it has no technological significance. Empa is conducting research on a number of novel materials that can hardly or not at all be processed using well-known standard processes. Hence, we devote a great deal of attention to developing and refining manufacturing processes and processing methods - and in this respect we have achieved quite a lot in recent years. How did this all begin? - Originally, nanomaterials triggered this thought in me. When you hear the keyword "nano", it quickly becomes clear that there simply aren't any processing machines there yet, and also that industry can't build on existing knowledge and simply further develop established processes in this area. So we had to look at process technology even then and show ways of generating added value with the help of these new materials. The second trigger was digitalization and the question of how to make the most of the possibilities of digitalization in manufacturing. Do you mean automation for mass production?