Research in the Synthetic Rubber Industry, A Quality Producers Perspecitve

摘要

Researchers in the rubber industry concentrate their work more and more on improving processes and quality or the modification of existing molecular structures. The pressures from the automotive industry and globalization are forcing everyone to optimize each and every process in order to reduce costs and keep a position amongst the technology leaders. Every aspect of a business is being evaluated, especially research. The traditional role of research & development in industry is changing- basic research is being outsourced to universities or institutes, not only those close to home. This leads to new questions; for example, how to handle Intellectual Property. R&D work is increasingly concentrated on customers projects using QM tools (ISO9001) in order to avoid unnecessary experiments and accelerate "time-to-market". It is important for a company, which is committed to produce high quality products, to find the right balance between basic, long term research and quickly solving the customer's problems.