Often heard, but not so easy to implement in conventional corporate structures. Start-ups are more flexible and therefore offer electronics manufacturers a high potential for cooperation – not just when things need to get done faster.
Global industry is revolving faster and faster thanks to the achievements made in digitalization. As a result, high expectations are developing to present new innovations – especially in high-tech industries, such as electronics manufacturing. A more complex and wider range of products, ever shorter product lifetimes and high quality expectations, influenced by increasingly tighter and more complex framework conditions, are just some of the challenges that electronics manufacturers have to master.
Addressing these demands requires new innovative technologies and business models, at ever shorter intervals, above all in manufacturing, as in mechanical engineering. Against this background, start-ups are becoming more and more interesting both now and in the future for the capital goods industry, in particular for electronic engineering. This is because, unlike established companies, start-ups grow with trend topics, can be more creative and unbiased in their testing and by being so, often enter the market faster with new products.
Who can work together? – The VDMA Startup Machine creates connections,... (image: VDMA)
Start-ups in the fields of the industrial Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, maintenance, generative manufacturing methods and cyber security, above all, have the potential to make lasting changes to mechanical engineering in cooperation with established companies.
The German Mechanical Engineering Industry Association (VDMA e.V.) has also recognized this potential and, as a consequence, founded the VDMA Startup Machine last year as a new group designed to bring together start-ups and mechanical engineering companies and support them in joint projects.
…Including at Startup Live Industry 4.0 & Smart Factory (Image: Startup Live)
This has made the numerous startup activities that the VDMA already offered in the past in individual fields of specialization (such as those at the Electronics, Micro and Nano Technologies Association) and cross-divisional departments easier to access. This approach also serves as an incubator for new ideas. The aim is to use a startup radar to provide a comprehensive overview of the players and their products that are relevant in the scene, as well as new cooperation concepts and event formats, along with new ways of working and new methods such as hackathons, speed dating, design thinking, fab labs, or digital innovation journeys that bring together selected start-ups and mechanical engineers.
"Start-ups have the potential to fundamentally change manufacturing in tandem with established companies."
