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02
02 The open design of the Technology
Plant enables employees to exchange
information spontaneously.
01 The spatial concept of the hotbeds
for ideas promotes creativity in everyday
working life.
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Scharnhausen Technology Plant: Room for creativity
»As an innovation management team, here at Festo we
form an interface between many areas of the company.
We are a kind of mouthpiece to them and develop great
products together. For me the particular attraction is
to be able to help establish and mould a progressive
factory like the Technology Plant through my work.«
Michael Straub, Scharnhausen Production, New Product Management
pleasant project work. When all the pro-
duction stages at Festo come together
perfectly, an optimum result can be
achieved in terms of costs, quality and
the ability to supply.
onacci sequence has a mathematical rela-
tionship with the so-called “golden ratio”.
It was formulated in ancient Greece as a
principle of beauty and aesthetics.
Worlds of ideas
The hotbeds for ideas favour an intellec-
tual change of pace in everyday life. They
provide designated areas where people
can retreat. Only in this way do group
dynamics, intuition and inspiration unlock
their full potential. Mentors look after
their respective space and its allocation.
Several people can act at the same time
on interactive walls and network with
other sites worldwide by video conference.
To ensure that valuable ideas are not lost,
the teams can save the materials they
compile in the hotbeds for ideas – memo-
ries need places. Metaplan boards with
notes, drawings, booklets or models can
be tidied away so that work processes can
be continued in the same place at another
time.
On call
Besides workstations for use on a tempo-
rary basis that are designed to encourage
the formation of hotbeds for ideas, there
are also long-term workstations in the
Technology Plant’s offices: employees
from other areas of the company can move
their workplace individually to the Tech-
nology Plant, for project work for example.
When developers on-site meet with pro-
duction specialists, their expertise has an
influence on the processes from an early
stage. Development times for new prod-
ucts are shortened. Coherent communica-
tion is the prerequisite for efficient and