AI for checking supplier certificates

Automated conformity testing with AI

Liebherr as challenge donor at our Black Forest Hackathon

Black Forest Hackathon

The Black Forest Hackathon 2025 took place from May 9 to 11 at the Freiburg Innovation Center (FRIZ) and brought together around 100 participants from Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland. Within just 48 hours, they developed innovative solutions for real industrial challenges - supported by state-of-the-art technologies, mentoring and exciting challenges from companies such as Liebherr, SEW-EURODRIVE, badenova, Balkon.Solar e.V. and KOCH Freiburg GmbH.

With free participation, full catering and inspiring keynotes from Michael Lauk (CDO, B. Braun Group) and Andreas Blattmann (Co-Founder Black Forest Labs/Flux), the teams were treated to an intensive weekend full of creativity, interdisciplinarity and networking opportunities. The crowning finale took place on Sunday in front of around 200 guests - with live pitches, a total of €6,000 in prize money and live music.

The Black Forest Hackathon was made possible by the support of Haufe Group, B. Braun Group, Endress+Hauser Group, Pfizer and the Pfizer Healthcare Hub, Sparkasse Freiburg-Nördlicher Breisgau and the City of Freiburg.

The Liebherr Challenge

As part of the Black Forest Hackathon 2025, Liebherr Mining introduced a practical challenge with direct application relevance from quality and compliance management. The aim was to develop an AI-based solution for the automated validation of supplier certificates. The challenge: Certificates of conformity are usually available in unstructured PDF documents and currently still have to be checked manually - a time-consuming process that is prone to errors and ties up resources.

The participating teams were therefore tasked with developing a system that uses OCR technology to extract relevant numerical information from the certificates, automate it, compare it with stored compliance requirements and issue alerts in the event of deviations. In addition, the solution should be able to store all results centrally in order to make them usable for trend analyses and future decision-making processes.

With this challenge, Liebherr addressed a central digitalization topic in the industrial supply chain and gave participants the opportunity to create concrete added value for efficiency, transparency and process reliability in a globally active company.

We have achieved this together:

Innovation meets practice

Together we showed how practical challenges can be solved with creativity and technology.

Working prototype

A promising prototype for automated certificate verification was created within 48 hours.

Impetus for Liebherr

The close cooperation between companies and talents has provided concrete innovation impulses for Liebherr.

Customer testimonials

What customers say about the collaboration

Participating in the Black Forest Innovation Hackathon allowed us to harness external perspectives that fuel creativity and accelerate progress-especially in our challenge, where the team delivered an impactful solution that addresses a real business need.

Florian DettwillerInnovation Management & Strategy Update Process, Liebherr