Ensuring Safety
Cyber-physical systems (CPSs) make life easier by interacting autonomously with their environment. Examples of this include self-driving cars. Amr Alanwar, Professor of Cyber-Physical Systems at the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology (CIT), is researching safety guarantees when dealing with CPS at the TUM Campus Heilbronn. These systems provide safety-critical functions in areas such as production, energy grids, medical devices and transport.
Prof Alanwar is investigating how the safety of autonomous vehicles can be guaranteed. V2X communication plays a central role here, enabling the real-time exchange of information between vehicles and other traffic participants. The aim is to ensure that autonomous vehicles navigate safely and do not cause accidents. Reachability analysis are used to guarantee safety at all possible locations of a vehicle. A data-driven approach is taken, using the car's position and speed to predict future scenarios. Prof Alanwar explains that by creating a set of all possible positions for the car and checking for possible intersections with obstacles, safety guarantees can be given.
In collaboration with the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the commercial vehicle manufacturer Scania, Prof. Alanwar is working on maximizing road safety in autonomous driving. The protection of life is the top priority here. It will still be some time before fully automated driving is possible in everyday life.
One of the popular learning techniques here is reinforcement learning, in which algorithms are trained through reward and punishment in order to learn correct behavior. Prof Alanwar provide safety guaranteed reinforcement learning using data driven reachability analysis. However, the current state of research is not yet sufficient to guarantee the desired safety.
Success through Ownership Competence
Why are some companies more successful than others? What do the skills of their owners have to do with it? Miriam Bird, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise at TUM Campus Heilbronn, and her doctoral student Jannis von Nitzsch asked themselves these questions.
They focused on two central ownership competences: matching competence – simply put, the "entrepreneurial spirit" – and governance competence – the skill to create a governance structure that harmonizes the interests of the firm’s stakeholders. Bird, von Nitzsch and co-author Prof. Ed Saiedi from BI Norwegian Business School drew on a dataset of more than 2,500 German owner-managed firms, which provides detailed financial, ownership and top management data.
They also searched the LinkedIn profile of the largest shareholder for information on professional experience and education, but also for words that indicate a high level of matching or governance competence. Key findings: Firm growth is more likely to increase when their owners have higher governance and matching skills. However, family firms often benefit less from the governance skills of their owners than other firms. A potential reason: Family members may be preferred over nonfamily members, even if they are not necessarily the best fit for the respective positions.
Bird and von Nitzsch are currently in the process of developing an online tool with the aim to make their research accessible to the general public. Put simply: Their tool should help users to assess their ownership competences in about five minutes.
Sustainable in the Future
Companies today face the challenge of being economically successful and at the same time operating more sustainably. Luise Pufahl, Professor of Information Systems at the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology (CIT), is researching at the TUM Campus Heilbronn how the sustainability of business processes can be made measurable and how transformations to more sustainable processes can succeed.
The complexity of the processes results from the dependencies and cooperation with partners. Without their data, the analysis can only be based on internal information Inaccurate or delayed data input can lead to errors. New technologies should support and standardize documentation.
Sustainability is increasingly becoming a decisive factor in business decisions. Companies are recognizing the need to protect the planet in order to survive in the long term. CO2 emissions and other sustainability data are being comprehensively recorded in lifecycle assessment databases, resulting in a complete sustainability cost factor. Prof Pufahl predicts that the government requirements for measurement and transparency with regards to sustainability will increase, making early action an advantage.
Prof Pufahl and her team are further developing the "SimuBridge" process simulator, which enables the simulation of business processes and their sustainability costs. A "digital twin" for business processes is intended to depict various scenarios and sustainability measures along the process chain. Blockchain technology could help to obtain trustworthy data from collaboration partners.
The pilot project is being developed on an internal university process, but expansion to other use cases is desired. Companies that establish sustainable processes at an early stage are investing in future-proof development.