District of Munich – Intelligent from the crisis – District of Munich

The crisis can now be grasped in figures. The current economic survey by the Chamber of Industry and Commerce for Munich and Upper Bavaria (IHK) shows that the business expectations of companies in the greater Munich area have fallen to an all-time low. Only eleven percent of company bosses expect the situation to improve, while 42 percent expect it to deteriorate further. In return, among the many companies driven by innovation in the district of Munich, there are growing expectations of politicians to make the region fit for the future right now. Rene Fassbender founded the start-up OmegaLambdaTec in Garching in 2015 and uses artificial intelligence to provide answers to many of the current problems. As deputy chairman of the IHK regional committee, he calls for a digitization offensive in authorities in order to use “dormant potential”.

The current economic report from the IHK shows that this could be necessary. From the end of September to mid-October, the IHK surveyed numerous companies in the state capital and in eight districts around Munich, including the district of Munich. The companies rate the current business situation largely as good. 37 percent are positive and only 13 percent are dissatisfied. This is mainly due to the fact that the capacities are still fully or satisfactorily utilized at 84 percent. On the other hand, 77 percent of companies complain that they have been affected by high price increases. Energy, materials and raw materials are expensive and some preliminary products are also scarce.

Despite everything, Rene Fassbender does not want to paint a pessimistic picture. Maybe it’s because of his job and his company. The deputy IHK spokesman in the district has made it his task to look professionally at problems in companies and in society and to look for solutions together with OmegaLambdaTec GmbH. He worked at the consulting firm McKinsey, received his doctorate in astrophysics and was active in basic research; including seven years at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching. Then he founded his company, which today is staffed by a few astrophysicists. The company earned its most recent merits with concepts such as how companies can get a better grip on fragile supply chains and how energy can be saved.

Many projects are blocked in the administrations

The people at OmegaLambdaTec are not clairvoyant. But they stand for a strength of the economy in the district of Munich, where many companies till and develop future technologies. As early as 2017, Fassbender presented in the mobility working group of the IHK regional committee how the flow of traffic in the Munich district could be optimized with the help of the large amount of traffic data that has now been generated. Smart mobility was the keyword. Today he advocates smart city solutions such as a “digital twin” of municipalities. Approval procedures in authorities could be accelerated by 20 percent, he says. Many projects would be blocked there. Fassbender put the damage nationwide in the hundreds of billions. The municipality of Kirchheim is participating in a smart city model project and is having such a digital twin developed, which is intended to map the municipality 1:1 on the internet. In Haar, at the request of the FDP, the municipal council also decided the same thing.

Open detailed view

According to Fassbender, the companies in the district, which are burdened by the energy crisis, Russia’s war against Ukraine and fears of inflation, would be given concrete help by removing bureaucratic obstacles. He is in line with the chairman of the IHK regional committee in the state capital, Peter Inselkammer, who also calls for more speed: in the expansion of renewable energies, the expansion of the transport infrastructure and housing construction. Inselkammer demands that the greater Munich area be “maintained as a home for competitive companies”. A crisis is also an opportunity. Fassbender says they slept through ten years because things went well even without intensified digitization. But now you have to get started.

Apart from the high energy and raw material prices, according to the IHK survey, companies see the greatest risks at 63 percent in the shortage of skilled workers and at 61 percent in a drop in domestic demand. The values ​​are clearly above those of the spring survey. Reluctance prevails when it comes to investment plans. 15 percent state that they want to invest more, 25 percent plan to cut back. 13 percent want to hire staff, 20 percent want to reduce staff.

Instead, Rene Fassbender favors making other adjustments and using artificial intelligence to make companies more crisis-proof. This way you can save costs, but he also advocates new digital business models. As an example, Fassbender talks about a program from his own company that was developed in 2019 and that uses algorithms to make gas price forecasts possible. “It wasn’t worth it back then.” Today that is cutting edge. The things are ready in the drawers. According to Fassbender, OmegaLambdaTec has just won two awards. First, the TransnetBW competition “Energy System 2050” with a program that presents scenarios of how electric cars can communicate with a power grid and act as storage.

The Garching-based company also succeeded in the International Clean Energy Hackathon Challenge on the very current crisis topic “Integration of electricity price forecasts in building automation”. According to Fassbender, a completely automated forecast for the electricity price traded on the exchange for the next three days was programmed every 15 minutes.