Ministry of Economic Affairs supports project

ASTECH invests in process innovations - processes are streamlined and employees are relieved

The company ASTECH Angewandte Sensortechnik GmbH specializes in non-contact measurement technology in industry and will now invest in the field of partial automation. The introduction of new or significantly improved technologies in a company's production process increases added value and frees up capacity. Processes are streamlined and employees are relieved. This is the approach taken by ASTECH Angewandte Sensortechnik GmbH with its new project. The Ministry of Economics supports this development.

Company aims to partially automate incoming and outgoing inspections
ASTECH Angewandte Sensortechnik GmbH is planning to develop and implement a process innovation. Under the title "Partial automation of incoming and outgoing inspections of vendor parts and finished sensors", selected processes within the company itself and in the areas of incoming and outgoing inspections of semi-finished products in the form of printed circuit boards and finished sensors are to be automated. To this end, it is planned to document the various stations from the previously manually inspected incoming goods of individual parts to the manual outgoing inspection of a finished product as far as possible automatically. By partially automating the incoming and outgoing inspection of semi-finished products, printed circuit boards and finished sensors, ASTECH says it will be able to significantly reduce working time for important processes within the value chain. In this context, an increase in productivity is to be achieved through better utilization of the employees involved. Filtering out faulty parts at an early stage leads to an increase in quality in the production process. This helps the company to meet customer requirements more effectively.

Ministry of Economic Affairs supports the process innovation
The total investment for the project is around 351,000 euros. The Ministry of Economic Affairs is providing support from European Union funds, specifically from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), amounting to almost 176,000 euros.

Information on the promotion of research, development and innovation in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the years 2015 to 2020
In order to strengthen cooperation between business and science and offer young, innovative technology companies the best opportunities, the state government has further expanded its funding for research, development and innovation in recent years. The ERDF funds available for this purpose amounted to 218 million euros in the 2014 to 2020 funding period. This included support for 245 collaborative research projects amounting to 115 million euros, 57 process innovations amounting to 8.6 million euros and 64 individual company research and development projects amounting to 31.4 million euros. Of the total grants approved, 24.5 percent went to small companies, 11.6 percent to medium-sized companies and 26.6 percent to large companies.

Outlook for funding research, development and innovation in the EU funding period 2021 to 2027
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has around 924 million euros at its disposal from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) in the EU funding period 2021 to 2027. Of this, 65 per cent is to flow into policy area 1 - a smarter Europe - of which 266 million euros will go towards business-related research. Of the planned 266 million euros, around 102 million euros are to be used for collaborative research funding and technology transfer.