With the founding of the Institute of Manufacturing Technology in 1982 academic education and research in the area of mechanical and manufacturing engineering at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg started. At that time Professor Manfred Geiger received the call to become Ordinary in Erlangen; since 2008 Professor Marion Merklein has been holding this position. Research activities of the LFT have been focusing on sheet- and bulk forming since its foundation, with more than 50% of the Institute research assistants working in the corresponding research groups. This is further emphasized by research projects like the Collaborative Research Centre 396 „Robust, shortened process chains for light weight sheet metal products” and the SFB/Transregional Collaborative Research Centre 73 „Manufacture of complex functional components with variants by using a new sheet metal forming process - Sheet-bulk metal forming”. Furthermore our work in the field of forming technologies is not only concentrating on topics related to the automotive industry, but for many years we have been gaining competence in the field of electronics engineering, as effectively proven by our successful participation in the Collaborative Research Centre 356 „Production systems in electronics” and the current Collaborative Research Centre 694 „Integration of electronic components in mobile systems”. In addition several research projects in the areas of forming and materials engineering, joining technology and tool construction have been and still are fields of research at the Institute for Manufacturing Technology. The strong increase of the number of students and employees, the large number of finished research projects, PhD-thesis and doctorates, the rooms available today and their technical-scientific equipment show the success of the LFT. Through a large quantity of research projects the available competence at the institute has increased constantly ever since its founding. Visionary planning and high flexibility as well as the membership in the Scientific Organisation for Production Engineering WGP and the International Academy for Production Engineering CIRP will be the guarantee for a continuing the successful development of the institute.