Simon Schumacher

I am research team manager for Implementation Methods for IT Solutions at the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Engineering and Automation IPA in Stuttgart, Germany. My research is focused on Industrie 4.0 and the digital transformation of industrial manufacturing, in particular the technological and organizational changes of labor on the manufacturing system level. At Fraunhofer IPA, I am project lead of the Future Work Lab, a government-funded and widely recognized innovation lab for technical, social and organizational changes in industrial labor with 75 live use cases and over 16,000 visitors within the first years. Furthermore, I am the strategic coordinator of the research field technologies for human-centered production at Fraunhofer IPA.

I hold a Dr.-Ing. from the University of Stuttgart, awarded in April 2025. As a visiting student I was enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2020 and 2022 in a collaboration with the MIT task force Work of the Future.

Before joining Fraunhofer IPA, I gained work experience at industrial companies (Audi AG, Wilo SE, active logistics GmbH) and engaged in intercultural exchange during two exchange semesters (Budapest, Hungary and Vilnius, Lithuania).

I’m currently still playing around with this whole website thing, so please excuse the lack of content and poor formatting. Please find a first version of my worldwide talk map here. I’m using the academicpages template which is hosted on GitHub pages.