Innovation
Business Research Partnership between Industry and JKU Linz
13. February 2018
Business Research Partnership between Industry and JKU Linz
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Viktoria Steiniger (Maternity Leave)
Holds editorial responsibility for blog topics, is researching and writing articles. Her stories give insights into the world of the voestalpine Group.
Fronius Perfect Welding, voestalpine Group’s steel division, and Johannes Kepler University (JKU) Linz are embarking on a business research partnership in 2018.
The focus here will be on the digitization of customer relationships in the global automotive industry and its impacts on marketing and sales in the supply industries. The partnership will run until 2022.
The new year saw the start of a business research partnership between Fronius Perfect Welding, voestalpine Group’s steel division, and the B2B Marketing department at the Institute for Trade, Retail, and Marketing at JKU Linz. The focus of the partnership will be a research project which will last for four years. The research assistant position required for this will be jointly financed by the two industrial companies, thereby expanding the existing partnership between voestalpine Group’s steel division and the Marketing Institute at JKU, which has been running since 2005.
Over the next four years, a doctoral student will be looking at the impacts of digitization on customer relationships and customer benefit. Bernhard Freiseisen, Senior Manager Strategic Marketing at Fronius Perfect Welding, explains the potential of the project, “This project will not only allow us to increase our emphasis on customer focus and digitized customer relations in practice, but it will also allow us to evolve based on the results of in-depth research.”
Target industry automotive industry
A shared marketing-oriented view of the target industry, the automotive industry, from the perspective of various supply industries will open up the potential for cross-industry networking, and allow the various parties to complement one another as regards content. The cooperation with industry partners will also contribute to an increased focus on application-oriented research at JKU.
Image 1: from left to right: Harald Langeder (Fronius), Prof. Thomas Werani (JKU), Bernhard Freiseisen (Fronius), Elisabeth Engelbrechtsmüller-Strauß (CEO Fronius), Werner Dressler (voestalpine), Prof. Gerhard Wührer (JKU). Picture: Fronius International GmbH
Fronius Perfect Welding
The Fronius Business Unit Perfect Welding is an innovation leader for arc and resistance spot welding and a global market leader for robot-assisted welding. From automotive to mechanical engineering, our goal is to provide optimum welding results for our customers. As a systems provider, the Fronius Welding Automation division also implements customized automated complete welding solutions, for the construction of containers or offshore cladding for example. The range is rounded off by power sources for manual applications, welding accessories, and a broad spectrum of services. With more than 1000 sales partners worldwide, Fronius Perfect Welding has great customer proximity. Steel Division of voestalpine Group
voestalpine Group’s steel division is the Group’s largest division in terms of revenue and is, as such, a quality leader in premium steel strip and a global market leader in heavy plate for sophisticated applications and complex casings for large turbines. The division is the first port of call for renowned global automobile manufacturers and suppliers, and a key partner to the European white goods and mechanical engineering industries, as well as the oil and gas industries. In the 2016/17 business year, the division achieved a turnover of 3.9 billion euros, an operating result (EBITDA) of 564 million euros and employed approximately 10,900 people worldwide.
Viktoria Steiniger (Maternity Leave)