The government and the Länder initiated the Excellence program to enhance German research and universitary insitutions. As a result, the RWTH Aachen is being state-aided with three engineering clusters of excellence and an engineering graduate school to promote doctoral studies.

The German Government, the research ministers of the Bundesländer and the German Science and Humanities Council support with their decision of enhancing the Excellence Cluster "Integrative production technology for high-wage countries" the special significance of production technology for high-wage countries like Germany. Aachen's scientists are now challenged to contribute to a sustainable production technology and to solve the location issue.

Nineteen professors of material and production engineering of the RWTH and several institutes are working in the Cluster of Excellence. The main objective is to extract contributions from production engineering to maintain production for the labor market in high-wage countries. Not only products for niche markets are economically relevant, but also products for mass markets. The solution for the mentioned issues requires a radically new understanding of the product and production relationships.

That is why working in the Cluster of Excellence is focused on coming up with principles for sustainable production strategies and theories, as well as approaches for technologies that are needed to realise them. Based on scientific analysis of the Polylemma of production technology, individualisation, virtualisation, hybridisation and self-optimising production have been identified as essential research areas. To achieve the aims of research activities, an active cooperation with manufacturers is necessary. Several companies with an international reputation agreed on providing real business and industry cases. These cases cover a wide spectrum of industrial production technology.

By launching the Cluster of Excellence, the "Aachen House of Production" was founded. It merges production technological competences at the RWTH Aachen in a strategic way and also allows companies to cooperate with activities concerning the Cluster. Today, the RWTH Aachen is one of the leading engineering universities worldwide, due to extending its core capabilities. Leading and also next generation scientists are invited to collaborate on the production technology of the future, right here in Aachen. The Cluster enables German and European companies to realise what is profitable, what has to be done on their own, and where competences have to be raised to be successful in a location of industry with high wages. The Cluster helps companies, especially small and medium-sized businesses, to act significantly more effectively and to save precious resources.