Workshop-Key-Contributors and Moderators

Innovation Challenges in the 21st Century

The innovation agent WG (working group) forms an initiative under the ASA (Automotive Skills Alliance). This WG developed in 2025 the first released innovation management capability assessment model (to support a practical implementation of the ISO 560xx norm series in the automotive domain). The model has been refined in assessments with trial partners from leading industry.
This workshop discusses the structure, the content of the model and explains lessons learned from the trial assessments. It includes assessment examples and also outlines the future plans of the innovation agent AG and the ISO 560xx assessor program which is launched in 2026 by EuroSPI in cooperation with ASA.
While in the year 2025 the working group elaborated methods to use prompting with different GenAIs for ideation (ISO 56007) and for strategic intelligence (ISO 56006) and how to validate the results using data validation criteria, in Q4/2025 and 2026 a research team of EuroSPI, ISCN and TU Graz implemented a new concept and tool which integrates a large research network with 3 GenAI tools, such as MISTRAL, ChatGPT and Gemini. This method was then applied for 3 different case studies: Analysis of cybersecurity test cases for vehicle servers in the EU project Cybertester, analysis of the use of new drone technologies in the agriculture sector, and strategic analysis for the innovation agent WG for the impact of the CRA Cybersecurity Resilience Act on European Union businesses.

Laura Aschbacher,MA,MBA holds an MBA for Innovation from Graz University of Technology, and her MBA thesis dealt with the set up of the innovation agent portfolio and tools, which led to developments like a SmartSPI tool for idea management using a combination of 3 GenAI/AIs and piloting the innovation capability assessment model in industry.  

Sustainability and Life Cycle Challenges

The world is changing from having different separate products and production processes to an integrated IOT world with fully networked, automated, connected and AI supported processes. When you drive a car, maybe in 15 years from now you use the mobile and connect the IT infrastructure to everything in the life. How will such a world look like, How will a life cycle management in this future work?

Dr Andreas Riel is a Prof. at Grenoble INP and did his Habilitation in Innovation Management. He has 10 years experience with AVL in Austria, and works in leading industry projects with ISCN as a senior consultant since 15 years. He is and has been safety and security coach to leading automotive industry projects at supplier but also at OEM level. He is a program committee member at CIRP (world leading manufacturing engineering conference series) and member of the book editing team and program committee member of EuroSPI since many years. He is involved in leading research projects at Grenoble INP about life cycle engineering and manufacturing.