Institut für Integrierte Produktion Hannover

Institut für Integrierte Produktion Hannover

Type	limited liability company
Founded	1988
Founders	Hans Kurt Toenshoff, Eckart Doege, and Hans-Peter Wiendahl
Headquarters	Hanover, Germany
Products	consulting, research & development, training
Number of employees	69 (as on Dec. 31, 2010)
Website	www.iph-hannover.de

Institut für Integrierte Produktion Hannover (IPH), which literally translates as "Hanover institute of integrated production", is a non-profit limited company providing research and development, consulting, and training in industrial engineering.

On January 1, 1988, three German engineering professors founded IPH as a spin-off company of Leibniz University of Hanover. As the non-profit company dealt with computer-integrated manufacturing, it was originally called “CIM-Fabrik Hannover” (CIM factory of Hanover). The name was later changed to IPH – Institut für Integrierte Produktion Hannover.

In 1991, the company and its 26 employees moved from the inner city to “Wissenschaftspark” in Marienwerder, in the Northwest of Hanover. To create room for an increasing number of employees, the company building was extended just eight years later.

The death of professor Eckart Doege, co-founder and managing partner of the IPH, in 2004 marked the end of an era. Bernd-Arno Behrens, professor of forming at Leibniz University of Hanover, was appointed as his successor. Co-founders professor Hans Kurt Toenshoff and professor Hans-Peter Wiendahl left the company in 2007 resp. 2008. They were succeeded by two professors of Leibniz University of Hanover: Ludger Overmeyer, professor of automation engineering, and Peter Nyhuis, professor of production systems and logistics.

The change of the management board led to a strategic transformation of research topics. In addition to logistics, production automation, and process technology, xxl goods was added to the IPH portfolio as another research topic. The research engineers apply the term xxl goods to products such as planes, ships, wind energy plants but also motor parts of utility vehicles, and jet engines. The company’s aim is to promote research dealing with the production of these large scale goods. Currently, IPH is the only research institute exploring this theme from a scientific point of view.