Freudenberg Innovation Forum, a bi-annual event, connects Freudenberg's research and development community in Brazil, China, Germany, India, Japan and the United States in global exchange of information on some of the latest research and development projects across Freudenberg's twelve business groups via global video conference. This year's event, held on May 14, focused on "Process Technologies for the Future" and discussed innovative solutions for advanced production processes.

 

The global session crossed continents and time-zones, making it an early morning affair for participants in the Americas and a late evening session for participants in Asia.

 

The U.S. session was held in Freudenberg Regional Corporate Center in Plymouth, Michigan, where research & development community from Freudenberg businesses active in the U.S. connected to their global counterparts.

 

"In a company as diversified and entrepreneurial as Freudenberg, it is important to institutionalize information exchange. That is exactly what our Global Innovation Forum does. It brings together the research and development and innovation community and starts the conversation that continues through topic-specific channels after the Forum," says Leesa Smith, Freudenberg North America president and regional representative.

 

From its beginnings, 165 years ago, Freudenberg has placed special focus on research and development and innovation. In fact, success and longevity of the Company can be attributed to innovation, research and development work and Freudenberg's ability to constantly reinvent itself. 

 

In his opening speech, Dr. Jorg Bocking, Freudenberg chief technology officer, addressed the Forum participants from Weinheim, Germany: "Leveraging our diversity in technologies and capitalizing on research and development work done both on business groups and corporate level continues to be our winning strategy. Our challenge is to further globalize our research and development activities and, basically, align them better with our sales globalization pattern, pushing more development work to locations that are close to our customers."

 

This year, the winners of the newly established Freudenberg Innovation Award were announced in the event. The Freudenberg Innovation Award is the highest accolade that recognizes a particularly successful innovation project.