Christina Schmidbauer was honoured with the VBW Prize at the end of 2023 for her outstanding dissertation.

Sebastian Schlund from the Institute of Management Sciences and VBW President Alfred Zimmermann presented the prize to Schmidbauer for her dissertation ‘Adaptive Task Sharing Between Humans and Cobots in Assembly Processes’, which she completed in 2022. This involves a method for adaptive task sharing between a human and a collaborative robot (cobot) in assembly processes. The method presented by Schmidbauer essentially consists of a task analysis, a partial task allocation and a task visualisation method. The results of the evaluation of the work showed a potential improvement in the economic efficiency of the processes and the physical ergonomics of the employees through the use of a cobot. The mental ergonomics are improved by the flexibilisation of the division of labour, as a monotonous way of working is counteracted by an increased variety of tasks.

Matthias Ondra and Michael Rachinger were honoured with the VBW Prize at the end of 2022 for their outstanding dissertations.

Matthias Ondra's dissertation ‘Investment in renewable energy technologies under uncertainty’ deals with the optimal investment decision in an energy portfolio consisting of wind and solar power plants. In his work, he analysed the diversification effect that occurs when these two technologies are combined under different electricity price scenarios and discussed various planning concepts on which the optimisation model is based.

In his dissertation ‘Exploring the Role of Business Models in Innovation-Centered Ecosystems A Multiple Case Study of Actors in the Ecosystem for Electrified Vehicles’, Michael Rachinger deals with design options for business models in the context of economic ecosystems that are created on the basis of new technologies.

In 2020, several students were honoured with the VBW Prize for their outstanding diploma theses and dissertations.

Matthias Karner for his dissertation ‘Phasenmodell zur Entwicklung einer werkzeug- und maschinenzustandsbedingten Produktionsreihenfolgeoptimierung’.

Matthias Wolf for his dissertation ‘Counteracting demographic challenges in industrial blue-collar work - Development of a structured approach for the identification of age-critical workplaces and their adaption by physical assistance’.

Johannes Breitschopf for his diploma thesis ‘A Procedural Model for Extracting Knowledge from Industrial Maintenance Reports’.

Simon Eder for his diploma thesis ‘Change Management bei der Einführung von Mensch-Roboter-Kollaboration und Cobots’.

Natascha Hajek for her diploma thesis ‘Einsatz von Exoskeletten als Assistenzsystem in der Produktion - Marktanalyse’.

Theresa Madreiter for her diploma thesis ‘Design and Development of a Prototype of TU-MARS’.

Stefan Salbrechter for his diploma thesis ‘Stock price prediction based on a sentiment analysis of financial news’.