Premium AEROTEC honours innovative employees

For aeronautics suppliers, innovations are becoming more and more crucial in global competition. To honour and recognise technological innovation, Premium AEROTEC created an annual innovation prize for submitted patents. The prize was awarded for the first time to three engineers at a gala ceremony held at the historic Schleissheim Airfield near Munich.

Christian Tümena and Dr. Christian Kulik were honoured for a process for creating a vacuum fixture to fabricate a fibre composite component. The device is lightweight, easy to handle and low-cost thanks to its modest infrastructure requirements. This invention significantly reduces the investments necessary while at the same time permitting much faster setup.

Jochen Scholler from the Augsburg facility conducted his research in an entirely different direction: He was honoured for his invention relating to adhesive infusion which enables simple and rapid gluing of components. In this regard he is working primarily in the area of basic research, as his discoveries can be applied not only to aircraft production, but also in the wind turbine, automotive and shipbuilding industries.

“Constant improvements are absolutely essential. We realise our visions and ensure that they become embodied in new patents, processes and product ideas,” said Joachim Nägele, management spokesman of Premium AEROTEC, at the award ceremony. “Our enterprise lives to a large extent from the creativity of our employees. From this we derive technological and cost advantages in the market. Consequently, we will use this prize to honour excellent performance each year.”

This strong innovation power helps Premium AEROTEC to master its expanding production of structural components for established aircraft programmes such as the A320 family, the A330/A340 and the A380. The production ramp-up for the new A350 XWB and the A400M military transporter are also bringing more work to the plants. Against this backdrop, Premium AEROTEC is continuing to expand its development department, particularly in the areas of design and statics for carbon fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP) technology. On account of its new development programmes, Premium AEROTEC anticipates a need for 50 additional experienced engineers enterprise-wide in the CFRP field, particularly with regard to design and stress analyses.

Premium AEROTEC GmbH has more than 7,000 employees and generated revenues of about 1.3 billion euros in 2010. Its core business is the development and manufacturing of metal and carbon composite aerostructures and the associated equipment and production systems. The company has production plants in Augsburg, Bremen, Nordenham and Varel in Germany, and in Ghimbav, Braşov County, Romania.