Production is a key to prosperity of an industry oriented society. Until now European economies, and especially Germany, have a leading position in production of investment and consumer goods. But the production in high-wage countries as Germany has to face challenges. These challenges arise on the one hand from so called megatrends and one the other hand from the new economic powers like the BRIC-States. To encounter challenges like shortened and quality-oriented product development processes, growing price competitions and the need for customer oriented innovations strategies for the production of the future have to be identified. Within the field of manufacturing especially cutting processes are still a key technology for leadership and to develop economical solutions - even where it is not expected (e.g. IT or dental products). Exemplarily four fields of action (Aerospace, Automotive/Powertrain, Energy, Medical/Dental) were defined to underline the forthcoming change and their consequences concerning machining strategies. Manufacturing technologies within the aerospace sector are especially facing challenges concerning the ongoing change of the material mix. Conventional materials like aluminum and steel are and will be more and more displaced by difficult-to-cut materials (titanium and CFRP). Manufacturing within the Dental sector is shifting from a manual production to automated industrial processes and increasing CNC based technologies. Hereby the CAD/CAM process chain is an enabler for industrial manufacturing. An interdisciplinary holistic approach which combines dentistry and manufacturing competence is needed to develop the “digital dental process chain”. However, besides these trends cutting is more and more in competition with new technologies like additive manufacturing. For strengthening the leadership especially in cutting operations the innovation management is the key to success to be one step ahead. All influencing fields of machining like cutting processes, machine tools, organizational strategies and energy or resource efficiency have to be integrated within the innovation process to encounter the upcoming challenges effectively.

In combination with: Proceedings of the 12th Powertrain Manufacturing Conference - Less Resources. New Technologies. Better Quality. Konferenz: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on High Speed Machining - Progress in Productivity and Quality, September 26-27, 2013, Darmstadt, Germany