Published on 17.09.2019 under News
FabLabs in Germany: more than a movement.
Manufacturing laboratories are seen as the new impetus for fundamental innovations in the economy. Adriana Cabrera on the question of what significance this special world of high-tech can have for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Germany and how these can mutually develop:
This year we were able to integrate the Colombian industrial designer Adriana Cabrera into the matrix innovation consultancy team. She supports the team as a senior consultant and is responsible for product development. For example, Adriana is developing the Advanced Program Fabricademy for SMEs in Germany. In addition to her studies in media art and surface design, Adriana Cabrera helped set up the FabLab at the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences. She has been working with the FabLab community for many years and is active in the fields of healthcare and research into intelligent textiles and materials. She is currently a lecturer in soft robotics at the Fab Foundation. We are happy to be able to ask her some questions about Fablab.
Dear Adriana:
The FabLab has become like a second home for you. What is the special attraction for you?
For me as a product designer, it is above all the extraordinary synthesis of science and practice. In the FabLab I have found a place where I can share my questions, my ideas and my knowledge with people from many other cultures in a worldwide community.
This is a great gift and a great opportunity at the same time. Together we look for new technological solutions that can really help people.
What do you particularly enjoy working on?
I am particularly interested in topics where we can create social and personal benefits with the help of new digital technologies. I work at the interfaces where the rapid development of hardware and digital technologies have a strong impact on the environment and people. I gained my first experience in researching intelligent materials (e.g. textiles) from the perspective of digital manufacturing. Since then, I have been particularly interested in the development of new production methods in connection with soft materials, for example in the further development of so-called soft robotics. They support people in their everyday life and at work and can thus help to create a friendly working environment and enable people to carry out difficult and particularly complicated tasks. The areas of application are so incredibly diverse, from industry, through the health industry, or agriculture to leisure and your own home.
What do you think companies can learn from working in FabLabs?
I think that especially small and medium-sized companies, so-called SMEs, which do not have their own research and development departments, should seek cooperation with FabLabs. Often there are very practical questions about new materials, new digital construction and manufacturing techniques, but also new product ideas and product designs that we deal with in the FabLabs. These are precisely the questions that are becoming more important every day for SMEs in times of digital transformation, right up to new business models.
Via the FabLabs, SMEs can easily develop a global network of mostly young people with competence who are among the best in their respective disciplines. This is basically very easy via the FabLab structures and their partners, but is still used far too little. We call this idea "glocalization". The aim is to develop globally available knowledge for questions that need to be answered locally. Quasi: to understand the world as a village.
You don't just work in the FabLab in Kamp-Lintfort, you also switched to the matrix team in Düsseldorf a few months ago. What are you doing there exactly?
I've been working with matrix for a long time. matrix is a partner of the FabLab in Kamp-Lintfort in various projects and also works with other FabLabs and MakerSpaces in Germany. At matrix we try to build bridges between the FabLabs and SMEs in very different projects. This is useful for both sides, because both learn a lot and very quickly from one another. Of course, this is not always easy and requires a high level of understanding both for the staff in the FabLabs and for the companies with their economic challenges. We at matrix believe that both sides need each other a lot more than they often think. With the technological power of FabLabs, companies can clarify and answer important questions much more easily and develop concrete solutions. You learn from the agile processes and structures in the FabLabs and become more agile yourself. With the companies' market access, the FabLabs can drastically increase the reach of their ideas and solutions for the people. That's what we're working on at matrix.
The top conference “The Industry of Things World” is currently taking place in Berlin. You will take part in this alongside Neil Gershenfeld. He will open the event. How important is the IoT World for Germany?
Many influential national and international players from the scene will meet at IoT World over several days. This year, special attention is paid to new models of the above-mentioned “glocalization”, to which business is turning with growing interest.
FabLabs create a special atmosphere that supports such trends. The concept of FabLabs is therefore of fundamental importance for the economy of the future. Prof. Gershenfeld (MIT professor for Bits & Atoms and father of the worldwide FabLab movement) has revolutionized the way of producing and digitizing in connection with the Internet of Things all over the world. He will present his vision of how industrial competence can be increased, global cooperation improved and local developments supported.
From my point of view as a moderator and representative of the FabLabs in Germany, there is an extraordinary manufacturing culture in Germany. It is based on the special knowledge of the tradition of the so-called "masters", which is based on thousands of years of knowledge about top performance in manual production. It is a challenge for new generations to be at the forefront of cutting-edge technologies with the same ambition. With this claim, we as FabLabs want to reach and inspire young people, older generations and companies in one place. In this sense, FabLabs represent much more than a space with new technologies: they are a special place of knowledge transfer.
I believe that the effect of the FabLab community is that it offers every industry and every individual the opportunity to change their understanding of production and to create access and networks for it. Our aim is to find and disseminate new approaches to prototyping. For this we develop z. B. further materials and machines to new self-sufficient products, which then, for example in extreme areas of the world, make distribution and cooperation deals on global markets with local products possible.
This is to be understood as a call to decision-makers in business, science and politics to change their way of thinking and to focus even more closely on the role of FabLabs in Germany, but also worldwide as mediators between these worlds. We invite all those who want to establish new forms of collaboration between groups and individuals to take advantage of the added value of working with our FabLabs.
