SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTS

DRIVING INNOVATION, OPTIMIZING PROCESSES

Digitization and automation, the ongoing development in the direction of sustainable mobility, and the increasing significance of climate protection and resource conservation offer us and our customers attractive opportunities – but also present us with some major challenges.

It is our strategic goal to provide our customers with tailored products and solutions of the highest quality at all times and to assume a leading position in the market. To meet this aspiration, make our core business as economical as possible, and consolidate our company’s sustainability, we continuously improve our processes, materials, and products. We also make systematic investments in our own research and development and in targeted innovation activities. Here, we focus both on the products themselves and on the materials, the manufacturing technologies, and the running and maintenance of our facilities. We aspire to combining quality and cost-effectiveness with energy and resource efficiency and to contributing to greater sustainability with our products above and beyond their useful lives. To this end, we cooperate closely with customers and research and development partners in a large number of projects.

Within the company, innovation management as well as preproduction and series development are part of an overarching systematic process managed by the Product and Technology Development department in Meinerzhagen. There are plans to increasingly coordinate the development activities at our sites in Dülken and the USA over the next few years. Whereas our innovation management focuses exclusively on new topics and forward-looking trends, the continuous improvement process we introduced a number of years ago seeks to optimize our existing processes and topics. This process is advanced from two directions: the CEO and the divisions jointly define, agree on, and pursue concrete ways of potentially making savings. Additionally, OTTO FUCHS encourages all of its employees to independently work on continuously improving product and process quality in their respective departments and teams. Support is provided here in the form of systematic methods and programs like Six Sigma, 6S, and the team-oriented employee maintenance system TOMIS.

INTERVIEW

MR. IHNE, MR. KWIATKOWSKI, WHAT DOES SYSTEMATIC PRODUCT AND TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT MEAN TO OTTO FUCHS?

J. Ihne: For us, this encompasses all the steps from the earliest innovation management stage to preproduction development and series development, and involves all the divisions from product and materials development to production and trial and quality management. It also encompasses virtual reality simulations and equipment construction, which is where some of our tools are made.
L. Kwiatkowski: We introduced innovation management in 2016 and merged it with the existing preproduction and series development to create an overarching process. While we have a time frame of around one year for series development, our innovation management looks much further ahead. For example, we specifically examine the trends and technologies in our core markets, then develop new research and development ideas on this basis.

WHICH AREAS DO YOU THEN FOCUS ON?

J. Ihne: Materials are an important area. Being one of only a few companies that predominantly produce their own materials, there are all sorts of development opportunities all along the process chain. Another focal area is manufacturing technology. For example, rather than buying our forming machinery “off the peg,” we go to the manufacturers with a long list of specifications, because we want to be the “best in class” in the long term with our products, services, and processes. The efficient running and maintenance of our facilities is directly related to this. The fourth area is the products. In this area, our work is largely determined by our customers’ requirements, while we control the levers on the operational side with our facilities and within our manufacturing processes.

AND WHERE DO YOU APPLY THOSE LEVERS?

J. Ihne: Put in the simplest of terms, it’s always a question of developing the most resource-conserving process involving as few manufacturing steps as possible, little material input, and high output. By this, we mean the ratio of the metal we use to what we then supply to the customer or what the customer incorporates into their application. The higher this ratio, the better the energy footprint.

SO IT’S A QUESTION OF KEEPING YOUR SIGHTS SET ON THE COMPLETE PICTURE?

J. Ihne: We have to adopt multiple approaches in order to develop sustainable materials or methods on the one hand and identify the perfect processes in each case
on the other. You can, for example, reduce the charge weight of parts and then introduce more manufacturing steps. You then need to determine what’s more efficient: reducing the metal can result in a good metal footprint, but the more complex process involved can ultimately increase the carbon footprint of our manufacturing. We need to examine this and weigh up the options very carefully here.

WHAT TOPICS ARE OTTO FUCHS’S DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION MANAGEMENT CURRENTLY FOCUSING ON?

J. Ihne: Electromobility is a very important topic for us. We are looking very closely at lightweight construction concepts and are focusing here in particular on optimally exploiting the advantages offered by aluminum. There is a great deal going on in the area of lightweight construction right now. Technologically speaking, this is a very interesting area, and this is where we see our core competencies and are really getting stuck in, in order to help shape the mobility of the future.

L. Kwiatkowski: A top topic for our innovation team is 3-D printing, an area in which we have already had some initial success. We are applying our extensive materials, product, and process expertise and are examining the entire process chain in order to be able to print optimized parts en masse in the future. The focus here is on the aerospace industry. We have now come far enough to be able to go to customers with our first sample parts. And the feedback we have received has been very positive. We now aim to develop a business case for 3-D printing together with our customers.

CAN YOU GIVE US AN EXAMPLE TO ILLUSTRATE THIS?

L. Kwiatkowski: The door stops for airplanes are currently made of forged titanium. But this part could also be manufactured using 3-D printing. The advantage is that less material is then used, thus also reducing the weight. This reduces fuel consumption, which leads to fewer carbon emissions. Considering there are up to one hundred of these parts in an airplane, the huge potential that this offers is obvious.

IT DOESN’T ONLY TAKE EXPERTISE TO ADVANCE INNOVATIONS LIKE THIS – IT ALSO TAKES A GREAT DEAL OF EFFORT ON THE PART OF THE TEAMS. HOW IMPORTANT IS EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT TO SUCCESS?

J. Ihne: It’s extremely important. Intensively incorporating all of our expertise into finding solutions is an integral part of the OTTO FUCHS philosophy. We therefore always work in interdisciplinary teams featuring a mix of young and very experienced employees. In particular when it comes to innovation and development work, we need the right employees with the right work ethic – and we most certainly have them! We have come a long way in this respect in recent years. We have had a very hierarchical structure in the past. When I joined the company, it was still the division heads who would say “This is the way things are to be done!” But these days, we tend to make decisions on the basis of simulations together with the team, for example. It goes without saying that the department heads sometimes have the final say as the experts, but this is the exception rather than the rule. We actively encourage our employees to really apply themselves and we give them the support they need in this area. And this is very well received.

THAT SOUNDS LIKE QUITE A CHANGE AT OTTO FUCHS ...

J. Ihne: It’s a veritable change in culture, the significance of which cannot be overemphasized. We are now more than an excellent manufacturing company – we are also seen as a renowned development partner. To get here, we not only had to produce good work and impress our customers, we also and above all had to reinvent ourselves, our mentality, and our technology again and again. The fact that we mastered this change so successfully is a huge achievement that OTTO FUCHS and everyone involved in the process can be immensely proud of.

L. Kwiatkowski: The change will also be very evident at our new technology center in Meinerzhagen, where the teams for innovation, preproduction and series development,
and equipment construction will work together under the same roof from fall 2019. This will be a forward-looking showpiece for OTTO FUCHS as a company of innovation!