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Contact Information:
Francis Harrison
Public Relations
Ricoh Company, Ltd.
Tel.: +81 3-5411-4705
Fax: +81-3-3403-1578
Kaiserslautern, December 5, 2003.
Ricoh Co., Ltd. (President: Masamitsu Sakurai) has signed a joint software-research agreement with two German software research institutes: the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE; Institut Experimentelles Software Engineering) and the Knowledge Management Research Group of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI; Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz GmbH).
The announcement was made today at the University of Kaiserslautern, in the city of Kaiserslautern, state of Rhineland-Palatinate, where the two research institutes are located, jointly by Prof. Dr. Dieter Rombach, Executive Director of Fraunhofer IESE, Prof. Dr. Andreas Dengel, Company Representative and Scientific Director of DFKI, and Dr. Hideko Kunii, a Senior Vice President at Ricoh and head of the Ricoh Software Research and Development Group. Also participating were Science Minister Prof. Dr. Jürgen Zöllner and State Secretary Harald Glahn (representatives of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate) and Prof. Dr. Helmut Schmidt, president of the University of Kaiserslautern.
Ricoh's aim is to speed research into software engineering and software for the next-generation office, in order to enhance its technological capabilities on a global level, and strengthen its solutions business. Meanwhile, the two research labs wanted to create a partnership with a prominent enterprise from outside the EU, with a world-class track record in the field, and that is continuing to pioneer. The joint-research agreement was made between the three parties, which will contribute to vitalizing the local region and attracting new businesses.
Specifically, Fraunhofer IESE will concentrate on research into product-line software engineering (increased productivity from software suites), while DFKI will concentrate on research into productivity support for knowledge work. The joint research project is planned to last a total of five years, running first for two years, then for an additional three years after an interim evaluation.
The city of Kaiserslautern has a high-tech research park nicknamed Silicon Valley of Germany, and is aiming for development by promoting this field. An hour's drive away from Frankfurt, Kaiserslautern is the partner city of Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, where Ricoh's Software Research and Development Group is located.
About RICOH
A pioneer in digital office equipment, Ricoh offers a broad range of digital, networked products, including copiers, printers, fax machines, CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD+ReWritable drives and media. Ricoh also competes in the camera field, both conventional and digital.
With 395 consolidated subsidiaries worldwide, Ricoh employs 74,600 people with total sales of $15 billion. The Ricoh Group currently enjoys No.1 market share for plain paper copiers in Europe, Japan and No.2 share in the USA.
http://www.ricoh.com
About Fraunhofer IESE
Fraunhofer IESE is one of the 57 research institutes of Fraunhofer, which, employing 12,000 researchers, is Europe's largest research organization. Established in 1996, it has over 120 full-time researchers.
http://www.iese.fhg.de/
Fraunhofer IESE has a particularly impressive world-class track record for improving software-suite productivity, development of embedded software components, and other software engineering fields.
About DFKI KM
DFKI is a limited-liability company with a total of 7 research labs, which are located in the city of Saarbrücken, capital of the state of Saarland, and the city of Kaiserslautern, in the state of Rheinland-Pfalz. Established in 1988, the company has about 150 full-time researchers, as well as a larger number of visiting researchers.
http://www.dfki.de/
The primary focus of the DFKI Knowledge Management (KM) research lab is the creative enhancement, distribution, and promotion of the use of Organizational Memory. The lab has a world-class reputation for the vertical integration of basic and applied research in such fields as document management, document image analysis, knowledge workflows, and utilization of Internet knowledge portals.
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