Five years of UNIpace Plastics Center

The mood was excellent among all those involved: five years ago, B. Braun and the University of Kassel launched the UNIpace Plastics Application Center. On Thursday, April 26, 2018, the 54th Management Jour Fixe took stock - and the results were positive all around. The cooperation is a "win-win-win situation," said Dr. Oliver Grönlund, Vice President Development Center CoE IV Systems, who moderated the event with around 130 participants at the Kulturfabrik in Melsungen. B. Braun has gained access to a pioneering technology, the university has gained a new field of research, and the students have the opportunity to learn in a practice-oriented manner.

Prof. Dr. Hans-Peter Heim, head of the plastics technology department at the University of Kassel, and UNIpace managing director Dr. Ralf-Urs Giesen presented the center's work. The focus is on basic and applied research for a material that is particularly interesting for medical technology because of its properties: liquid silicone rubber. It is plasticizer-free, resistant to heat, chemicals and environmental influences and, last but not least, physiologically harmless. And it makes it possible to replace the time-consuming manual assembly of components - for example in infusion pumps - with an automatic injection molding process.

Around 1.3 million euros have already been invested in UNIpace. "We have laboratories there that are unique worldwide in this concentration," Prof. Heim reported. At least in Germany, there is no comparable research facility. This, said Juergen Stihl, Group Senior Vice President CoE IV Systems, was precisely the reason why silicone research was made the content of the strategic partnership: "We wanted to start an excellence initiative in this area." And they didn't want to just stew in their own juices, but deliberately seek exchanges with other companies that are also working with UNIpace. B. Braun board member Markus Strotmann spoke of an "opportunity for B. Braun to approach things differently and get input from outside." This, he said, has been very beneficial.

While B. Braun manufactures around 90 percent of other plastic components itself, only one of the more than 80 silicone components currently in use comes from its own production. With the help of UNIpace's research, that could soon change. "Our goal is insourcing," said Michael Selk, senior vice president CoE Pain Control & CVC. "The very successful and very value-added work of the application center has taken us a giant step forward in doing that." For example, the next generation of the Easypump infusion pump could use a silicone injection molding technology developed at UNIpace that massively reduces the number of assemblies. And in other areas, this technology could also be used to combine several functions in one component - a decisive advantage, as Dr. Andreas Herold, head of the B. Braun Technology Center, pointed out. "This helps us to produce more cost-effectively." The successful cooperation with UNIpace is therefore to continue for at least another five years.