Sovereign Value Cycles

Consumers are increasingly opting for sustainable products and services. Companies are faced with the challenge of meeting the increased demand through responsible action. Therefore, the purely fossil-based, linear value creation must be rethought and transformed into a circular, sovereign value creation. To this end, Fraunhofer is working with a total of 16 institutes to develop a Fraunhofer Charter, which sets the guidelines for roadmaps for research and development into sovereign value cycles, a new production and consumption concept. The charter forms the basis for new virtual and physical infrastructures and services.

Industrialized nations are dependent on imports and exports as well as long, partly difficult to control trade routes. Companies have delegated sovereignty over processes and products to global supply systems, whose structures are difficult to understand and difficult to develop in a sustainable manner. Global supply chains often lack transparency about which raw materials, additives, semi-finished products or components used and which environmental and occupational safety standards are complied. Sustainability, resilience and flexibility have an enormous impact on the social and economic value of products; in addition, the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 12 puts sustainable consumption and production in the center. The Fraunhofer approach to this is new because it relies on the knowledge-based, digital representation of entire value cycles.

Sovereign decisions for companies and consumers

Tomorrow's value creation must become more sustainable, more intelligent and above all more circular. Sovereign value creation cycles are replacing global value chains. To facilitate this transformation, Fraunhofer is describing fields of action to make consumption and production sustainable through application-oriented research and development – in the short, medium and long term. It is Fraunhofer's commitment to how consumption and production can be made sustainable through application-oriented research and development - in the short, medium and long term.

To this end, Fraunhofer is developing a novel Corporate Sustainability Platform (CSP), which enables confident decisions by companies and consumers on the basis of secure and reliable, credible and customized information on supply chains and production conditions. Currently, 14 institutes are working on the requirements of a CSP for the three lead markets of nutrition, chemicals and energy. These will be linked to complementary research fields (bio-economy, hydrogen, AI), developed on the basis of four technology demonstrators (e.g. muesli bars, child seat, PV module, battery box) from the Fraunhofer lead markets and backed up with business models. In this way, Fraunhofer provides a modular, knowledge-based and digital technology platform as the central hub of the circular economy, creating cross-industry solutions for companies.

Definition: Value creation cycle

A value cycle comprises all stages of raw material extraction, material production, energy supply, product manufacture, product use, refurbishment, repair and the conversion of products or their components into renewed value-added - across established value-added chains.

•  14 Fraunhofer institutes: IAIS, IAP, ICT, IEG, IGB, IML, IMW, IPA, ISE, IST, IVV, IWU, LBF, UMSICHT (darin enthalten: der Fraunhofer-Cluster CCPE^®)