Experience from countless cost optimization projects has shown that not only the constructive product design often leads to high costs.

Often the way of procurement is also suboptimal. This leads to complex, risky value chains, too few supplier alternatives or too little material availability in the procurement markets and ultimately results in delivery failures.

Difficulties in procurement are often due to points like:

• small number of standard and norm components,
• use of narrow tolerances and high surface qualities,
• use of materials that are difficult to obtain and the
• specification of manufacturers and production processes on drawings.

We would be pleased to examine your component designs for bottleneck parts and develop suggestions on how you can use alternative sources of supply by means of minor design measures and thus improve your ability to deliver.

Please call us or write us a short note and we will contact you immediately: We would be pleased to look at bottleneck parts for you without obligation and make suggestions for avoiding them.

On March 12, 2018, the joint award “Partner der Reserve” of the Federal Ministry of Defense and the Association of German Armed Forces Reservists was presented for the third time at the annual reception of the Federal Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, Entrepreneurial Association of Germany e.V. in Berlin.

As “Partners of the Reserve”, exemplary employers are honoured who are committed to the Bundeswehr Reserve in a special and exemplary manner.

In addition to BERODE GmbH from Cologne, another company and a city administration received the award this year.

BERODE and the Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences are jointly developing a self-sufficient hydraulic cylinder in which all previously external components (tank, motor, pump, cylinder, valves if necessary) are integrated with approximately the same construction volume.

New ways are being explored to achieve the fusion of electric motor and hydraulic pump to form a “motor pump”. The increased level of integration of the components creates a cylinder that enables completely new product applications.

The project is funded by the Central Innovation Programme for SMEs (ZIM) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy.

The device is intended to be used primarily in applications that previously could only use an electric drive, that previously had few hydraulic functions, whose cylinders were previously located far from the source or that have an increased risk of leakage.

The expected advantages of this solution are extensive:

• Higher power density
• Expansion of the range of applications of various products
• Higher functional integration
• Improved energy balance
• Improved leakage behaviour, especially to the outside
• Greater design freedom
• Reduced maintenance effort
• Reduced assembly times
• Reduced susceptibility to repairs
• Lower power demand on the motor

BERODE gains considerable advantage by the acquisition of a hand-held X-ray device for non-destructive material testing. In the consulting business of cost engineering or when carrying out tear-down analyses, the question of the exact types of materials used in the products to be examined arises. By means of common procedures, material types can be easily distinguished. It is much more difficult to determine the exact type of material in order to be able to carry out an equally exact cost estimation or to work out property improvements in value engineering. At this point BERODE has in the past used the possibilities to fall back on external material testing laboratories or to carry out component destructive material tests. These possible procedures required considerable time and money or resulted in the products to be examined being damaged or destroyed.

By purchasing and training the consultants on a hand-held Olympus DELTA X-ray fluorescence analyser, BERODE is now able to measure material compositions within seconds non-destructively in its own tear-down analysis workshop or alternatively at the customer’s site. This means minimizing the demands on external testing laboratories with a decisive time and cost advantage. The Olympus DELTA analyser can be used to determine most ferrous and non-ferrous metal alloys, but not plastics, for example. Since there is a small emission of X-rays during each measurement, training is necessary for the safe use of the device, which our consultants have completed.

Please contact us for further information.

Grease or oil lubrication on moving, open or closed lubrication systems can have a negative effect on the manufacturing and operating costs of the machines concerned. On the one hand, heat treatment and its reworking, lubrication holes, grooves and nipples as well as piping and fastenings drive up assembly, manufacturing and installation costs. On the other hand, lubrication, maintenance and cleaning intervals as well as the wear and tear of machine parts in an abrasive environment reduce the availability of the plant and thus increase its operating costs.

By designing mechanically highly stressed machine parts with modern coating technology BERODE can eliminate the mentioned disadvantages of manual and automated lubrication for its customers. Within the scope of value engineering projects, for example, components of machines for metal forming (5,000 kN) and in coil handling were equipped with appropriate coatings. The surface pressure on the coated surfaces is up to 220 N/mm². The machines are used in an abrasive environment and it cannot be excluded that hard particles contaminate the friction surfaces. After 12 months in 3-shift operation, the coated surfaces show no visible and measurable wear so far.

Depending on the application, surface hardnesses of 350-550 HV can be achieved, whereby the design is always made in conjunction with the carrier material. The same materials can also be paired for the carrier materials, which can lead to problems with conventional lubrication. With a typical coating thickness of 5-15 µm, the good tribological properties are demonstrated by the low coefficients of friction of 0.1-0.15 in the steel-coating and 0.05 in the coated-coating constellation.

In the above-mentioned applications, the manufacturing and assembly costs of the components concerned were reduced by around 25 percent. In the direction of the end customer, machine manufacturers also benefit from a technological unique selling point that has an effective effect on lower TCO.

Please contact us for further information.