A highlight in the semester schedule

This year, we once again organized a joint semester field trip with students from the bachelor’s degree programmes in “Ecology and Environmental Protection” and “Green Engineering,” the Diplom and KIA degree programmes in “Mechanical Engineering,” and the master’s programme in “integrated management systems.” This time, the excursion offered a broad overview across all departments, ranging from production-integrated environmental protection to energy and Quality management, and on to high-precision mechanical and plant engineering.

Over the course of three days, we visited exciting companies that are directly or indirectly linked within the value chain. The raw materials industry, for example, supplies steel to companies in Mechanical Engineering, where it is further processed or refined. Mechanical Engineering develops and manufactures production equipment, tools, and technical components for, among others, food and animal feed production, as well as for companies in precision engineering such as medical technology. Manufacturing companies form the core of the value-added network. Through their specific requirements for materials, machinery, and processes, they drive innovation along the entire chain. At the same time, they provide important impetus for more efficient and sustainable processes—for example, through optimized production workflows, the recycling of residual materials, or reduced energy consumption. In this way, they significantly shape both their suppliers and downstream applications. As locations and infrastructure platforms for manufacturing companies, industrial parks perform important functions such as energy supply, waste management, and logistics.

All sectors benefit indirectly from innovations in other sectors. For example, good steel quality enables higher rates of lightweight construction in Mechanical Engineering, which in turn leads to equipment and production technology being designed to operate more energy- and resource-efficiently overall.

For each company, our students were given questions that tied in with the learning objectives of their respective degree programs, and these were discussed together during the bus rides between stops. The insights gained from this experience impressively demonstrated how closely technical and environmental issues are intertwined and how much an interdisciplinary approach broadens, deepens, and enriches the perspectives of all disciplines.

Against this backdrop, we look forward to further strengthening this collaboration in the future in the areas of teaching, research, and knowledge transfer, and to jointly developing and putting it into practice in our new faculty and in interdisciplinary degree programs, fully in line with our University Development Concept 2030+.