INSIGHT
Future trends in Research and Development
Fuchs Petrolub was founded in 1931 as a family owned company. Today the family still retain 54% of the ordinary shares and the company is listed on the M-Dax in Germany as a group with 57 affiliate companies and a turnover of 2.3 billion euros. Fuchs offer a full range of lubricants with 10,000 active formulations and products which are offered to the market.
The company is very technologically focused which is reflected in the company’s motto of ‘Lubricants, Technology, People’. Within the company there is a big focus on research & development which is a global strength for the group operating across all four continents with twenty-four laboratories based in nineteen countries. In these technical facilities we have around four hundred and fifty employees working in this area which is approximately nine percent of the entire workforce.
One of our major areas of activity of the last few years is that of sustainability which has been recognised internally as being a core focus for the group. This strategy was recognised last year when Fuchs were awarded with the German sustainability award. Thanks must go to the efforts of Apu Gosalia our Vice President of Sustainability and Intelligence who is leading all of the group’s efforts in this key area.
Today there are four major trends and challenges we are facing in the lubricants sector. Firstly Digitisation and Big Data. What do we mean by digitisation and how can this affect our business in bringing together
48 LUBE MAGAZINE NO.143 FEBRUARY 2018
Christine Fuchs, Vice President of R&D, Fuchs Group
Christine Fuchs
the necessary resources in order to maximise the efficiency of operations? Big data brings with it big challenges. What is the best way to handle big data? How can it be utilised to speed up development times and reduce the time to market by applying systems and models like simulation and calculation, the design of experiments (DoE) in our effort to develop “smart” lubricants. In essence making the lubricant talk by using sensor techniques.
Another major development is 3D printing in relation to additive manufacturing. This is a very modern and very challenging manufacturing technique nowadays and is already being applied in the aerospace, engineering, medical and steel industries.
As I mentioned earlier sustainability is also a big influence and key driver of development in the future. Here we need to consider the issue of the sustainability of raw materials. We need to ensure that raw materials are a sustainable resource as we move away from a dependency on crude oil and have in our mind a reduction of our carbon footprint to create more environmentally-compatible products.
Lastly e-mobility which will impact not only automotive lubricants but also industrial lubricants in future. Today we are already considering new requirements which have arisen from these new areas such as temperature stability requirements and the compatibility of requirements as well as working with new types of materials. In all of this we need to consider the performance and productivity of lubricants.
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