Bayer Technology Services (BTS; Leverkusen; www.bayertechnology.com) and the Technical University of Dortmund (both Germany; www.tu-dortmund.de) have established the Invite GmbH research company, which will operate a new research center at Chempark Leverkusen, Germany. Flexible and efficient production concepts that help to conserve resources will be developed and tested in this ”factory of the future”. The construction of the new building required is being funded in part by €5 million from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia s Ministry of Innovation, Science, Research and Technology under Economic Stimulus Package II. Construction in the Cologne-Flittard section of the Chempark Leverkusen site is scheduled to begin in spring 2010, with completion expected one year later.
The Managing Director of Invite GmbH is Michael Lorenz, a process engineer who has held a number of different positions at Bayer in Germany and abroad since 1989. The Cologne native served as a project manager at Bayer sites in Baytown, Tex., and Map Ta Phut, Thailand, and was most recently responsible for project management of R&D projects at Bayer Technology Services.
Entirely new technologies are required to achieve a further substantial improvement of production processes with respect to sustainability and resource conservation. With this research center, we not only seek to develop innovative reaction and process technologies with the help of process intensification, microreaction technology or modular, standardized fabrication units, we would also like to "invite" — in the truest sense of the word — all stakeholders involved, regardless of the competitive situation, to follow and shape this work in public, says Lorenz, explaining the name of the research company. The name is derived from the terms INnovations, VIisions, and TEchnologies, and is intended to reflect the paradigm shift in the European chemical industry, according to Lorenz. Professor Metin Tolan, Prorector Research at TU Dortmund and a member of the Invite GmbH Supervisory Board, explains that BTS and TU Dortmund are establishing an open innovation environment with Invite that will lead a significant shortening of innovation times. Furthermore, the results of the research projects will also be provided to students participating in initial and continuing education programs as well as to working professionals.
TU Dortmund is one of Europe’s leading institutions of higher learning for biological and chemical engineering, and has a long history of collaboration with Bayer on numerous R&D projects. Both stakeholders are members of the €30-million, EU research project F3 Factory, which is being coordinated by BTS and where for the first time ever 25 partners from academia and industry set aside their competitive differences to work in a consortium to develop new technologies and production concepts. F3 Factory stands for Flexible, Fast and Future Factory. The consortium hopes to sustainably solidify the worldwide technology leadership of the European chemical industry and improve its competitiveness by developing faster and more flexible manufacturing processes. The objective is to methodically develop the modular continuously operated factory (F3 Factory), standardize the associated processes and interfaces and demonstrate the F3 Factory for actual products. The project hopes to combine the efficiency and scalability of world-scale plants with the flexibility of a batch plant. This will be done by the application of comprehensive process intensification strategies to conserve raw materials and energies, which together account for roughly 70 to 80% of the production costs, thus well above the cost of labor. Another F3 Factory focus is the development of actual products, such as solvent-free polymers, customer-specific surfactants, high-grade active ingredient intermediates and innovative materials based on renewable resources. The technical feasibility of the F3 production concept will be demonstrated at the Invite technology center in Leverkusen.