The new Freiburg professorship “Production Control” is based at the Institute for Sustainable Systems Engineering INATECH at the Faculty of Engineering. Its focus is on ensuring the quality and increasing the resource efficiency of production processes. The scientific work contributes to securing Germany as a place for business and at the same time to achieving Europe-wide environmental goals.

To enable companies to produce even higher quality, more cost-effectively and more sustainably in the future, the »Production Control« professorship will research optical measurement and testing methods that are fast, contactless, and flexible – even in harsh environments. “I have one goal,” says Professor Carl, “I will use my research and teaching to supporting the manufacturing industry in automatically controlling their processes and products on the production line.” Up to now, this control has often only been carried out on a random basis – and usually only by visual inspection or with complex laboratory technology. This is where the professorship's research work comes in: In close cooperation with companies’ development departments, feedback processes are developed that help companies to significantly improve production processes.

Networking with the University of Freiburg

With the new W3 professorship »Production Control«, Fraunhofer IPM is now even more closely linked to Freiburg as a location of science. The institute is already represented at the University of Freiburg with three other professorships: “Optical Systems” (Professor Karsten Buse, Institute Director Fraunhofer IPM), “Gas Sensors” (Professor Jürgen Wöllenstein, Department Head at Fraunhofer IPM) and “Monitoring of Large Structures” (Professor Alexander Reiterer, Department Head at Fraunhofer IPM).

Vita Professor Daniel Carl

After studying physics at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Carl completed his doctorate in physics at the Humboldt University in Berlin in 2005 on the subject of »Characterization of methods and applications of digital holographic microscopy«. During his doctorate, he worked as a research assistant at the Laboratory for Biophysics at the University of Münster. After graduating, Carl joined the Fraunhofer IPM. He initially worked as a concept and software developer and project manager. In 2009, he took over the »Inline Metrology« group. He has been Head of the »Production Control« department since 2015 and Deputy Director of the institute since 2017. From 2020 to 2024, he worked as a lecturer at INATECH in the degree program Sustainable Systems Engineering.

Further Information can be found here.