Innovative polystyrene, polypropylene & plastic packaging, bespoke packaging and technical parts - Knauf Industries.

Innovation at Knauf Industries

ID Lab, our innovation and development lab, to innovate and co-develop your products.

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A COSMOPOLITAN TEAM Reduction of Time To Market ADDED VALUE FOR OUR CUSTOMERS ID LAB NEWS

OUR VISION OF INNOVATION :

Our vision at Knauf Industries is to be recognised as an innovative partner by our customers through the value we bring to their projects. To achieve this, we have created an innovation and development laboratory to disseminate an innovative mindset throughout the company.

At ID lab, we are constantly developing tools and methodologies to maintain the high level of excellence of our teams, to anticipate and respond to any potential for innovation in the countries and markets where Knauf Industries is present, and also to develop opportunities in new markets. We promote creative, customer-focused tools and ensure cross-functional sharing of information and innovation, regardless of the country, market or current processes: cellular foams, plastic injection, thermoforming, extrusion and contract cutting.

Our experts and engineers are close to our customers and are specialised by market, by material or by technology.

A COSMOPOLITAN TEAM

We deploy our skills and equipment to generate value-added solutions and identify new growth segments, business models and technologies.

A first Lab specialised in cellular foams (EPS, EPP, etc.), and speciality materials is based in France, in Ungersheim (68) to provide essential functions such as design, prototyping and testing.

A second Lab exists in La Bernerie-en-Retz (44), specialising in thermoforming and injection.

The objective is to combine the agility of a local structure with the strength of an international group, with all the Labs being connected and challenging their ideas and concepts.

ID Lab is the collective intelligence of a cosmopolitan team!

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Our actions are based on 4 service lines:

Product and system innovation:

  • Circular Economy friendly solutions
  • Renewable materials: up to 100% recycled content, up to 100% biomass content, biobased
  • Eco-design: recyclable packaging / reusable packaging / reusable packaging, material optimisation
  • End of life integration
  • Active and intelligent packaging, smart packaging solutions, connected packaging & IoT
  • Material innovation (high temperature resistance, fire resistance, rebound, etc.)
  • Aesthetics (graining, painting, decoration, skin-molding)
  • Product functionalization (thermoforming, bi-density, inserts, fasteners, air-guides)

Reducing Time to Market :

  • 3D printing
  • Digital simulation
  • Scanning of 3D objects
  • Rapid prototyping & hot wire cutting
  • Material sampling (thermoforming)
  • Pilot workshop

Organisational and human effectiveness:

  • Innovation workshop & Tech Day with clients
  • Co-development with academics, startups and experts, research projects & innovation ecosystems
  • Creativity methods and user-centred support (design thinking)
  • Established innovation process integrating a PMS (Project Management System) & project management tool and good design practices
  • Project mode work between design team and customers & customer experience
  • Creation of a customer club
  • Internal webinars on innovations and technologies & Workshops
  • Business model innovation

Increasing the added value:

  • Retro-engineering & reverse engineering
  • Co-creation workshop with customers, user-centred design, minimum viable product (MVP)
  • Material testing and performance validation laboratory
  • Lightweighting
  • Life cycle analysis
  • Performance optimisation through innovative design options & innovative packaging
  • Production of customised test tools

Reduction of Time To Market

Thanks to digital technologies, we reduce development time by optimising our solutions with digital simulation to anticipate product performance before the prototyping phase.

Our strategic motivation: to develop the innovative spirit of our teams, to innovate in order to bring added value to our customers and to be recognised as an innovative company by the market!

We use 3D scanning technologies to analyse products and perform accurate and fast dimensional checks !

two people doing CAD on computers

ADDED VALUE FOR OUR CUSTOMERS

We optimise the amount of parts in the packaging with innovative design software.

We use augmented reality and realistic renderings to present our solutions to best match the reality of our customers’ environment.

In addition, our new surface treatment technology allows us to produce foam plastic looking parts, enabling our customers to target new markets or add value to their traditional markets.

man at a computer doing CAD

ID LAB NEWS

NEW 3D SCANNER ARM

Our innovation and development laboratory ID Lab has been equipped with a 3D scanner arm for scanning a physical part or a package from a scanned part.

With it, we do reverse engineering to provide a 3D file and create the most suitable packaging for our customers’ needs. The added value with this tool is the reduction of the “Time to Market“, product innovation and organisational and human efficiency.

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