Paper Title
Low-Invest Production for Start-Ups Through Cooperative Production Structures - The Case of an Electric Vehicle Start-Up

Abstract
Newly founded companies commonly exhibit limited capital reserve. This raises the question, how to start producing quickly and with low capital expenditures. Addressing this problem, a planning approach was developed at the WZL of RWTH Aachen University enabling the usage of cooperative production structures. This notion positions itself between general interorganizational cooperation concepts and typical arm’s length relationships of contract manufacturers. The relation between the contractual partners is based on a cooperative logic. To establish such an organizational network form, the planning approach systematically compares required production resources with available resources in the company’s regional environment. Identified gaps along the production process are either closed by developing low-invest solutions or by a targeted commissioning of suppliers. In this paper, the approach is demonstrated using the example of an electric vehicle (EV) start-up. Index Terms- Cooperation, Planning, Production, SMEs