On Mon­day, Decem­ber 16, 2024, the first Insid­ers Cap­stone project in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Fraun­hofer IESE cel­e­brat­ed its suc­cess­ful con­clu­sion. The RPTU Master’s stu­dents pre­sent­ed the results of their inten­sive three-month project work in the new­ly cre­at­ed Insid­ers premis­es.

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Insights into practice: students as contractors

In the Insid­ers Cap­stone Project, the stu­dents took on the role of the con­trac­tor, while the automa­tion experts from Insid­ers, as cus­tomers and clients, set a prac­ti­cal chal­lenge from the con­text of intel­li­gent process automa­tion. Their chal­lenge: the LLM-based devel­op­ment of prod­uct inno­va­tion for a no-code tool for gen­er­at­ing automa­tion ser­vices. Sup­port­ed by the sci­en­tists at Fraun­hofer IESE, the stu­dents large­ly orga­nized them­selves and devel­oped a deep under­stand­ing of the task at hand over the course of the project. After a didac­tic-method­olog­i­cal kick-off phase designed by the Fraun­hofer IESE team, the inten­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion with Insid­ers ini­tial­ly began with sev­er­al require­ment inter­views in which the stu­dents ana­lyzed the prob­lem. This was fol­lowed by reg­u­lar reviews with the automa­tion experts, in which progress was dis­cussed and next steps defined. At the final pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day, Decem­ber 16, 2024, the stu­dents proud­ly pre­sent­ed their results in a small prod­uct show.

A no-code service generator at the heart of the project

The spe­cial thing about this cap­stone project: the stu­dents worked direct­ly with Gen­erAItor, Insid­ers’ lat­est no-code tool for gen­er­at­ing automa­tion ser­vices. This put them at the inter­face between research, inno­va­tion and busi­ness prac­tice and gave them a deep insight into the work­ing meth­ods of a tech­no­log­i­cal­ly lead­ing AI com­pa­ny.

Voices at the end of the project

Prof. Dr. Peter Ligges­mey­er, Insti­tute Direc­tor of Fraun­hofer IESE and — togeth­er with Insid­ers’ Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Wern­er Weiss — ini­tia­tor of the project, praised the prac­ti­cal chal­lenge that Insid­ers gave the stu­dents with this cap­stone project.

Patrick Men­nig, Depart­ment Head Dig­i­tal Inno­va­tion Design at Fraun­hofer IESE, who reg­u­lar­ly accom­pa­nies cap­stone projects in coop­er­a­tion with a large agri­cul­tur­al machin­ery man­u­fac­tur­er, empha­sizes the spe­cial nature of this project: “What was extra­or­di­nar­i­ly excit­ing about this first Insid­ers cap­stone project was that the stu­dents had to famil­iar­ize them­selves with an exist­ing solu­tion. This is not usu­al­ly the case, and it was great to see how they made great progress from ini­tial teething trou­bles thanks to the sup­port of the Insid­ers employ­ees. The icing on the cake is the excit­ing explorato­ry cre­ativ­i­ty that aris­es when lots of young peo­ple can try things out.”

To be continued: Insiders Capstone 2025

A repeat of the Cap­stone project is already planned for 2025. This will fur­ther deep­en the suc­cess­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion between Insid­ers and Fraun­hofer IESE. The close inte­gra­tion of sci­ence and prac­tice not only strength­ens the next gen­er­a­tion of aca­d­e­mics, but also the tech­nol­o­gy loca­tion Kaiser­slautern, which is con­stant­ly evolv­ing as a cen­ter for research and inno­va­tion.