imlThe Fraunhofer IML is said to be first address in the holistic Logistics and Supply Chain Management research and is working on all fields of internal and external logistics. According to the idea of Fraunhofer, problem solutions for the immediate benefit for companies are worked out on the one hand. On the other hand, preliminary research of two to five years, in individual cases beyond that, is executed in an application-oriented research manner.

At the Institute, founded in 1981, there are at the moment 190 employees as well as 250 post-graduates and students with pre-diploma, supported by colleagues in workshops, laboratories and service areas. Future logisticians with diploma as well as bachelor students in logistics and industrial engineering and students of related faculties are in practice guided and involved in projects. Apart from the location in Dortmund, there are additional locations in Frankfurt/Main, Hamburg and Prien at Chiemsee as well as international offices in Lisbon and Shanghai. According to the renowned American Georgia Institute of Technology “Georgia Tech”, Fraunhofer IML ranks among the first three institutions for logistics worldwide. There are many international contacts of Fraunhofer IML  to other research and educational institutions as again “Georgia Tech” (USA) and Shanghai (China), furthermore HSG St. Gallen (Switzerland), Lisbon (Portugal), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Stellenbosch (South Africa). For interdisciplinary projects the Institute can draw on a total of 23,000 employees of the entire “Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft” (Fraunhofer association) in 67 institutes.

Made-to-measure arranged teams create cross-industry and customer-specific solutions in the area of materials handling, warehouse management, supply chain management, simulation supported business and system planning and also traffic systems, closed loop economy, resources logistics, building logistics and e-business, and last but not least Purchasing and Supply Management. In addition, Fraunhofer IML is acting as general coordinator for the multi-institute central theme “Internet of Things” within the entire “Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft”.

With 160 partner companies as well as 12 educational and research institutions the “EffizienzCluster LogistikRuhr” is currently the biggest European research project in logistics. It won the the „leading edge cluster competition” of the German Government in 2010.