Digital Sustainability

The vision of the Fraunhofer Research Campus Twin Transformation, funded by the Upper Franconia Foundation, is to build a community in which organizations can find inspiration, support, and connections in the fields of digitalization, sustainability, and their intersections. The aim is to foster collaboration and derive overarching insights from individual projects so that they can be utilized by a broad group of users.

Upper Franconia is one of the most industrially strong regions in Germany. Volatile supply chains, rising energy prices, a shortage of skilled workers, and increasing sustainability requirements are putting particular pressure on small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises in the region. This is exactly where the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT and the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA come in: The research campus serves as a knowledge transfer and project development platform that supports companies in Upper Franconia in implementing digitalization, sustainability, and the interface between the two.

In 2025, the team behind the research campus conducted a comprehensive survey on the current state of twin transformation in Upper Franconia. This included a roadshow with more than 50 company representatives as well as individual interviews with over 30 companies and multipliers. The results were published in the white paper "Mehr Wettbewerbsfähigkeit durch Digitalisierung und Nachhaltigkeit – Twin Transformation in Oberfranken".

The insights from various regional companies paint a differentiated picture: Around one third of companies are already implementing digitalization measures, while just under one fifth are doing so in the area of sustainable transformation. However, a strategic integration of digital and sustainable transformation in the sense of twin transformation exists in only very few companies. The main barriers are not a lack of willingness, but rather fragmented data systems and missing know-how.

At the same time, good practices identified in the survey demonstrate what is possible: In the projects examined, companies are, for example, reducing emissions and operating costs through energy management systems, establishing paperless offices to lower resource consumption and costs, or using digital technologies in combination with machinery to reduce shift work and thus relieve employees.

The Fraunhofer Research Campus Twin Transformation is currently developing a readiness check and expanding its portfolio with additional on-site and online formats that provide knowledge and support companies in Upper Franconia and beyond through the results of applied research.