Product Development

The steadily increasing pressure from competition makes new and improved products and services important for our customers. Therefore, product development is a key function within Uddeholm.

Our concept for successful product development is based on a concurrent engineering system. This system involves all functions from the start to the end of the development project, securing product function as well as time to market.

The product development process is strongly market-oriented and key factors contributing to the rapid and effective development of new products are:-

• Customer participation in the development projects
• Application testing programme together with selected customers
• Advanced R&D laboratory
• Advanced process development
• A variety of metallurgical processes, including Conventional, ESR, Powder Metallury and Granshots
       

The Research Process

Initially a development concept is tested in a laboratory environment. If successful, it becomes a formal development project involving our main functions such as R&D, process development, production, marketing, quality and most importantly customers and sales companies in different parts of the world.

In addition to our own facilities, we liaise with various research institutes and universities around the world. This enables us to perform cutting-edge investigations and thus attain long-term product and process knowledge.

The properties of new products are verified by means of numerous test procedures. The final properties are validated by several application tests together with potential customers.

The product is finally compared to existing grades and a case study is presented. It contains information that the customers all over the world can accept as a true finding of the potential of the new product.