Miller Magazine Issue:114 June 2019

38 NEWS JUNE 2019 awarding it a gold rating. In terms of its design concept, the new innovation campus is integrated into the Bühler site in Uzwil as the bridge that links the development, engineering, and design teams with the modernized Application Centers and the factory. This enables Bühler to develop solutions together with customers, start-ups, and industry and research partners up to the point of market maturity with much higher speed and efficiency. The CUBIC represents Bühler’s purpose of “Innovations for a better world” and it focuses on promoting new training and development methods. Among other things, it embraces the dual education system of Switzerland, housing apprentices and academics, as well as youth and experience. Project teams from all Bühler business areas currently re- side in the CUBIC. Many of them are developing digital so- lutions, including Bühler Insights, a cloud-based IoT platform for digital services, which was created in close partnership with Microsoft. About 20% of the R&D budget went into the development of digital solutions in 2018. “The CUBIC campus will become the epicenter of our col- laborative ecosystem,” says CTO Ian Roberts. “It embodies our innovation spirit and culture, where we will inspire, dis- cuss, understand, and derive actions that will support us as an industry to create more sustainable value chains, while contributing to addressing the burning environmental and societal challenges of our time.” SHORTER TIME TO MARKET THANKS TO THE APPLICATION CENTERS Vital elements of the new innovation campus are its eight modernized Application Centers. The ideas of customers and prototypes are tested in the Application Centers, where they are refined up to the point of market maturity. In the Battery Lab, researchers are continuing their efforts to develop a new, continuous process for mixing electrode slurries applied in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries. In the Grinding & Dispersing Application Center, Bühler is deve- loping wet grinding and dispersion solutions, for example for making printing inks. In the Die Casting Application Center, five die-casting cells are installed for training operators and for conducting customer tests. Many of these developments are already incorporated into modern applications for the e-mobility industry. In the Pasta Application Center, the latest pasta is being developed, for example high-protein pasta containing flour from pulses or products with a proportion of microalgae. The Grain Technology Center, at 3,000 square meters, is the wor- ld’s largest Grain Milling Application Center. It also has its own Analytics Lab. Among other things, the Nutrition App- lication Center develops textured vegetable proteins –alter- natives for the growing number of flexitarians. Together with customers, the Bakery Innovation Center develops wholeso- me, fresh bakery products. In the Chocolate Application Center, new flavors and novel processes for cocoa-based products are tested. In the Coffee Application Center, customers test low-energy roasting pro- cesses to develop new taste variants. The CUBIC and the Application Centers will be presented to Bühler’s partners from industry and academia on the oc- casion of the Bühler Networking Days 2019. On August 26 and 27, 2019, Bühler expects to welcome nearly 800 guests from process industries around the world to this event. Key- note speakers at the Networking Days 2019 include, among others, Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, Norway’s first female Premier Minister, and Stefan Palzer, CTO of Nestlé.