Extrusion International 3-2024

42 Extrusion International 3/2024 QUALITY MANAGEMENT – INTERVIEW “Our solutions optimize quality assurance – efficiently and sustainably” In 2022, BST GmbH finally took the opportunity to once more present its latest quality-assurance solutions for web-processing industries at international exhibitions and interact with customers face to face. The company’s products make a major contribution to efficient and resource-friendly production. In the interview below, Jörg Westphal (picture), executive vice president for the business unit Flexible Materials, explains how BST can help prevent waste, realize potential savings, and, with SMARTData, make quality-assurance processes even more sustainable. M r. Westphal, what BST solu- tion are your customers es- pecially interested in? Jörg Westphal: The answer is without a doubt SMARTData, our contribution to the digitized opti- mization of inspection processes. SMARTData enables the collection, analysis and processing of quality- related data across all processes. The generated quality data is mu- tually compatible, allowing a multi- system, connected approach to quality. What benefits does SMARTData provide for quality management? Westphal: On the one hand, you get documentation of any kind of quality data for all processes. And on the other hand, thanks to the location-specific data allocation, rejects can be detected at an early stage and surgically removed from the production line, which provides extreme optimization of produc- tion efficiency. As a result, subse - quent production processes are supplied with nothing but flawless materials, thus laying the ground - work for top product quality across the board – a major factor for re- ducing overall equipment costs. SMARTData optimizes processes and plays an important role in the predictive maintenance of ma- chines and components. What sort of changes have there been in the requirements that your product solutions are expected to meet, and how is BST responding to those with its new products? Westphal: Like everyone else, companies from the synthetics and rubber industry are having to ad- just to the overall external condi- tions, which are in some cases chal - lenging. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the short - age of skilled workers became even more noticeable. So it is very impor- tant that machines be easy to op- erate. No lengthy training or deep technical know-how is needed for our product solutions. They are in- tuitive to operate and easily inte- grated into all of the common ma- chines. At many companies, supply chains have also become more un- certain. So it is important to take the production material that you do have and use it as efficiently as possible. With our solutions, there is less scrap. So customers are sav- ing not just material but energy as well, which is another increasingly important factor against the back- drop of the current energy crisis.