Heraeus_GB15_Magazin_EN_RZ_29_04_lowRes - CREATING INNOVATIONS

26 RICHARD KÜCH PRIZE/BEST COOPERATION Team Flexible Forward: Customer-friendly price hedging tool (Flexible Forward) “Flexible Forward” allows Heraeus’s industrial customers to purchase a certain amount of precious metals at a fixed price. The agreed-upon quantity can then be received within the established time frame on a flexible basis. This gives Heraeus’s precious metals customers a higher level of certainty with regard to future prices, while also ensuring availability. Since mid-2015, our precious metals customers have been using Flexible Forward with great success. Team Coniuratio Digitalis: Digital Conjuration Heraeus Noblelight has taken a new path in its cooperation with customers from the coating industry while developing a new infrared lamp. The entire production process for the appropriate lamp was first conducted and optimized in a fully virtual mode, using 3D design and simulation calculations on a computer. Interdisciplinary teamwork and constant communication with the customer were the crucial elements for successful completion of the project. CREATING INNOVATIONS T he Heraeus Innovation Awards were presented in November 2015 with a new design and new categories. The winners of the Konrad Ruthardt Award for the “Best Innovation” are revolutionizing the design and the possibili- ties of future medical implants. The innovative Heraeus material system made of ceramic and platinum (CerMet) makes it possible to produce smaller, more robust and more powerful medical components. In recognition of this technological advance, the winners also received the new Customer Focus Award. Heraeus customers had the opportunity to vote for the innovation they consid- ered to be most important. The Richard Küch Award, given to innovations based on outstanding cooperation, went to an innovative hedging instrument for the pre- cious metals business. The winner, “Flexible Forward”, gives Heraeus customers a higher level of certainty with regard to future prices. Innovation deeply embedded in the Heraeus DNA Heraeus CEO Jan Rinnert praised the Innovation Award finalists: “The projects once again demonstrate that in- novation is deeply embedded in our DNA. I’m especially pleased with the direct feedback from our customers, because our innovations will make them more success- ful. Our top teams make a definite contribution to these ends with their great products and processes.” Of the 26 projects submitted for the Innovation Award, a jury selected seven finalists. Since the Heraeus Innovation Awards were initiated in 2003, nearly 280 innovations have been submitted, resulting in a total of 43 winners. Finalists in the category of “Best Innovation” for a product, process or business model were competing for the Konrad Ruthardt Award, named for physicist Dr. Konrad Ruthardt (1906–1973), founder of the Heraeus physical laboratory and co-developer of high-vacuum technology. The “Best Cooperation” award, for the best innovation resulting from outstanding internal and external cooperation, bears the name of physicist and chemist Dr. Richard Küch (1860–1915), who was Heraeus’s first head researcher and inventor of the “Original Hanau” sunlamp. O

Pages Overview