Characterization of the German metalworking industry using data mining methods

Many research questions require (statistical) knowledge of manufacturing. The available data are often not collected at the level of German states, or many sub-sectors are grouped in such a way that the questions cannot be answered directly. For these reasons, project work often requires supplementing statistical data sources by other data sources, e.g. interviews or ad-hoc surveys. In general, the latter are costly and/or do not provide an overall picture of the analyzed aspects of the industry. This subproject aims to explore data-driven methods to enrich statistical data on manufacturing using the German non-ferrous metalworking sector as a test case.

• How is the German non-ferrous metalworking industry distributed across federal states? Are there (specialized) centers?
• How many companies work on the different non-ferrous metals?
• To what extent are companies product-specialized or material-specialized?
• How important are supply-chain transparency, sustainability, corporate social responsibility, etc. to the firms and their presentation to their customers?
• Can the questions above be reasonably answered by the data? Can they be answered also at the level of the German federal states?