The German Innovation Award is the prize that makes innovations visible. It awards cross-industry products and solutions which differ from the previous solutions in particular due to user-centricity and added value. The German Innovation Award makes fantastic performance visible to a wide audience and ensures successful positioning on the market.
The jury is composed of independent, interdisciplinary experts from industry, science, institutions and the financial sector. Andrej Kupetz holds the chair, the Managing Director of the German Design Council.
The #ULTRA-LIGHTWEIGHT SEAT is the result of a seven month project in which the vehicle seating design was completely reimagined. The instigators, vehicle developers csi development technology, Alba tooling & engineering, specialist for the development and manufacture of innovative manufacturing systems in the area of high-quality plastic components and management consultancy AMC, developed the virtual and hardware prototypes of the ultra-lightweight seat together with Robert Hofmann GmbH, 3D|CORE, LBK and covestro. The finished prototype, which was revealed for the first time on 21st March at the lightweight construction symposium in Kasel, Trier by LTF director Olaf Freier, is about 20 per cent lighter than those of its competitors with a weight of around ten kilogrammes. An innovative winding process for composite fiber components conceived by AMC is responsible for most of the weight reduction; csi optimally utilised the filament‘s strengths in the design of the seat structure. This xFK in 3D process uses a resin impregnated continuous filament from which the components are wound in accordance with loads. Alba tooling & engineering manufactured the tools for this carbon-fibre composite lightweight construction from individual strands and developed manufacturing and tool technology for ultra-light PU moulded foam parts and non-woven fibres. In addition to the lightweight construction record, the prototype also shows what is feasible beyond the established modular system in the seating sector. The seating design could be considered for hypercars or future air taxis.
The #ULTRA-LIGHTWEIGHT SEAT not only represents a pioneering innovation which offers the customer true added value through its lightweight construction, high flexibility and adaptability, as well as its resource-saving construction, it also manifests the excellent cooperation which the instigators and partners demonstrated with one another under the leadership of csi development technology. csi acted as a networking company, optimally coordinating the supply chains with one another through process-oriented project management. In this way, csi positioned itself as a system integrator across the entire supply chain, which not only masters the virtual development of high-quality solutions, but also possesses the ability to manage complex projects.