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