KraussMaffei

Cooperation AGREEMENT WITH UDE

Boosting energy efficiency for plastics machinery

Munich, January 19, 2010 – With annual turnover of around 50 billion euros, the plastics processing industry is one of Germany’s major economic segments. Across this industry, energy not infrequently represents up to five percent of manufacturing cost and there is substantial potential for savings. Boosting energy efficiency in plastics processing machinery is the subject of a cooperation agreement, signed on January 15, 2010, in the Mechanical Engineering faculty of the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE).

 

The other signatory to the agreement was KraussMaffei, the world’s largest manufacturer of plastics processing machinery, headquartered in Munich. KraussMaffei develops, manufactures and markets extruders, injection moulding machinery and polyurethane / reaction processing machinery for the international plastics industry. The actual strategic cooperation partner on the university side is the department of Engineering and Plastics Machinery chaired by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Johannes Wortberg. This department specializes in plastic machinery engineering and process technology, including quality management, in plastics processing.

 

Alternative drive technology

The cooperation partners have agreed on regular information exchange and on supporting engineering students and researchers. One specific area of cooperation will be developing and optimizing alternative drive technologies for plastics processing machinery. The remit for this project includes energy consumption, energy recovery, precision and efficiency. KraussMaffei will be mainly concerned with developing and optimizing components, especially the practical implementation and the application-related process engineering. UDE will contribute its scientific and research expertise.

 

The agreement brings the UDE into the PRIMUS Network for Innovation, set up by KraussMaffei. Other participating universities are the Technical Universities of Dresden and Chemnitz. The UDE will be responsible for the focus area “Energy efficiency”.