Can factories grow like sunflowers?

Bees, seashells and sunflowers - these are just a few examples from nature which could serve as models for the design of factories of the future. But how? Research is currently being carried out on this at Graz University of Technology. In the future, factories should be able to be modified very fast to produce a car today, a tractor tomorrow, and a baby buggy the day after tomorrow. Industrial production has changed dramatically in the last few years. Where earlier emphasis was on turning out large quantities of the same product, today the key word is individualisation. "In the future, factories should be able to be modified very fast to produce a car today, a tractor tomorrow, and a baby buggy the day after tomorrow," explains TU Graz researcher Daniel Tinello of the Institute of Logistics Engineering . In the field of electronics, for instance, there are launches of products almost every week to which factories have to adapt.