How we provide Process Excellence to the special glass industries

Umicore’s business unit Platinum Engineered Materials is a fine example of how Umicore fulfills its mission to be at the leading edge of future technologies. The approach to work in closed loops and with complementary competencies provides tailor-made engineered solutions of high economic and technological value to our customers.

To support our customers manage the trade-off between cost savings to remain competitive, while at the same time complying with increasingly demanding requirements from their target markets, PEM applies a total system approach to provide solutions based on innovation and technology. We have evolved from a mere PGM component supplier to the only provider of single-source solutions utilizing a sophisticated toolbox:

Spanning everything from engineering & designing, advanced materials and manufacturing technologies, as well as services like state-of-the-arts analytics, consulting and training, up to complementary non-PGM products to round off what is necessary to come up with holistic solutions. Of course, we do also close the loop in terms of material flows, and do provide recycling of both, PGM and non-PGM materials.

Our main asset – technology leadership – is our customers’ main benefit: it enables our team of experts to offer specific and unique system solutions to any kind of task, being it to save PGM installation weight, to increase the lifetime of components, to reduce PGM losses or to work on an improved energy balance of the process.

And what is even more important: there are hardly any one-time tasks. Our people understand that we can only be successful in case of sustainable considerations that benefit from the results and experience that we have gained in close partnerships with our customers. Consequently to manage this complexity we repeat the loop each time a campaign is finished, and restart the procedure to bring the process to the next level of excellence: Life Cycle Management.

In the upcoming Newsletters we will provide examples, highlight new approaches to design and engineering, explain about total cost savings, and introduce new visions and perspectives for Display, Optical, Technical and Crystal Glass.