Accelerating textile innovations by open science[Bearbeiten]

Projektbeschreibung[Bearbeiten]

Throughout the past twenty years the textile industry in Germany has shifted towards technical textiles. Due to the possibilities of application-specific designs and the integration into existing structures, technical textiles contribute to more than 50 % of the generated revenue in the industry. As a consequence, new supply chains were successfully implemented, resulting in constant revenues. This made the German textile industry to hold the worldwide technological market leadership. However, in order to counteract a stagnant market, to differentiate from imitators and to foster economic growth, the textile industry strongly depends on the implementation of novel kinds of cooperations. Here, digitalization is key to develop processes, globally interconnect interdisciplinary players and disseminate knowledge. Thereby, unconventional solutions and novel configurations for technical systems and cooperations can be generated. Due to the fact, that textile-based innovations are relevant for multiple industries, using open science as an accelerator for innovation processes is crucial from a technical and an economic point of view. The aim of the project is to use digitalization in order to enable scientists, companies and start-ups to stay updated on recent innovations and actors in textile (related) markets in real-time, to initiate new cooperations by matching the right actors and to receive impulses for the development of new technologies/processes.

The project will be realized by setting up the digital platform “Textilloft”, which runs an ecosystem to accelerate textile innovations in multiple industry sectors such as mobility, health, energy as well as information and communication. Its main purpose is to increase the transparency in the development of textile innovations by including actors along the process chain - from polymer scientists over producers of textile products to consumers - in the innovation process. Therefore, the innovation cycle is accelerated and a transfer of textile products to other industries is triggered.

Autor/in[Bearbeiten]

Name: Inga Noll
Institution: Institut für Textiltechnik der RWTH Aachen University
Kontakt: inga.noll@ita.rwth-aachen.de