Managed by SAP Research in Dresden, the Future Factory Initiative is a joint effort between SAP Research and industrial partners to foster co-innovation, research, and development for the manufacturing industry.

Using a real-world setting, the Future Factory Initiative presents leading edge software and the latest hardware with different scenarios, SAP products, and prototypes in a typical discrete manufacturing environment. With more than 20 partners, including large, midsize, and small companies, the Future Factory Initiative constitutes a heterogeneous and strong ecosystem of market and technology leaders.

Following the SAP corporate strategy to develop the world's best business applications for on-premise, on-demand, on-device, and orchestration, the Future Factory Initiative is active in three areas:

Insight	Collaboration	New Users
Gaining full transparency and insight into all manufacturing processes is a premise for continuous improvement. SAP Research addresses the challenges around data acquisition, system integration, and visualization. Supporting sustainable and energy-efficient production is a particular focus of current research and development.	Collaboration within and across enterprise boundaries is becoming increasingly important as value creation is more and more distributed. SAP Research addresses the challenges around supply network collaboration, the information exchange between engineering and manufacturing departments, and the processes and technology for enabling product-as-a-service business models.	With the advent of new technologies, such as smart phones and virtually ubiquitous Internet connectivity, more and more people are looking for access to information and services. SAP Research applies current trends and technologies, such as the Social Web, Web 2.0, and mobile, to the processes in manufacturing and service management. Supporting shop floor workers during task execution is a particular focus of this work.

Learn More about the Future Factory Initiative

To find out how your organization can participate in the Future Factory Initiative, contact:

SAP Research Dresden
Chemnitzer Str. 48
01187 Dresden, Germany
E-mail: research.dresden@sap.com