In this interview, Sarah Beranek, the Commercial Director at Buehler, talks to AZoM about sustainability in product innovations.
What is affecting Buehler’s focus on sustainability?
At Buehler, we value the health, safety, and engagement of our customers as a top priority. We rigorously follow a customer feedback process to understand and support the specific needs of our customers across different regions, industries, and applications. Through this, we have recognized the increased need to offer products and solutions that minimize impact to the environment, reduce waste, save on utilities, and minimize health hazards for users. These same needs arise within our own internal teams, so we have prioritized innovating in solutions to support those needs. As a business, we maintain annual certification to ISO 14001 holding our employees and management teams accountable to track and regularly improve key metrics that impact the environment like electricity usage, sustainable power for our operations, and recycling/waste management throughout the facility.
What is Buehler doing to be more sustainable as a company?
In addition to numerous product innovations that offer sustainable solutions to our customers, internally we have a robust waste/recycling program that has successfully prevented nearly 110,000 pounds of waste from entering landfills since implementation. We have shifted our electricity to all renewable sources while also lowering usage each year. Buehler is also very proud of the work we’ve done with our own suppliers to institute re-usable packaging for product components so that parts coming into the building have very little waste associated with them. We also support the nonprofit LovetheOceans.org with products so they can continue their work in marine conservation, sustainable fishing, and protecting endangered species.
What product innovations tie into sustainability or environment, health, and safety concerns?
Buehler has an assortment of new supplies and accessories that are aimed at reducing waste, extending lifetime, maximizing usage before disposal/recycling, and minimizing health hazard exposure to users.
- Phenocure LP - Improved low hazard phenolic thermoset resin
- Varidur – Improved low hazard fast curing acrylic mounting system
- Abrasive Blades – Reduced waste by lasting up to 3x longer than traditional and competitive products
- DGD Mosaic – Diamond Grinding Disc with longer life and less waste
- MetaDi Paste – Concentrated, consistent small diamond particles resulting in less waste
- MasterPrep – Efficient alumina suspension polishing formula resulting in less waste
- Hardness Test Blocks – Grid-lined test blocks resulting in maximized usage before replacement
- Abrasive Saw Recirculation Systems – Reduced water usage and disposal by pulling out debris
Buehler will be showcasing these products in a series of videos that will initially premier on April 15, 22, and 29, 2021 on LinkedIn.
How is Buehler innovating to stay ahead of the curve with market transformations?
Buehler is on top of market changes such as the automotive and aerospace sectors’ transformation towards green technologies, the shift towards electrification, and lightweight materials manufacturing. With lightweight materials and electric vehicle manufacturing, there is an increased need to properly characterize the materials and associated manufacturing technologies, which involves metallurgical inspection and testing. Buehler has the breadth of knowledge and expertise on materials testing in these sectors and combined with our long history in the design and manufacturing of metallurgical equipment, we have proven to be a good match. We continually partner with customers to understand what is driving their needs today, what they expect in the future, and then vigorously innovate around those needs to offer differentiated products, support, and solutions to meet those needs.
How does the human capital of Buehler come into play with these advances?
Buehler is backed by 85 years of knowledge and experience in the industry of materials preparation and analysis. We have a depth of technical expertise that is highly valued within the organization. Our people and teams are what differentiate us when it comes to supporting the needs of our customers through sales expertise, customer service, applications support, or post-sale technical support.
What does the future hold for Buehler and its customers?
Buehler strives to be the ultimate solutions partner to our customers. In all areas of the business, we look to our customers to engage with us on what they need so that we can deliver the best service, products, and technical solutions. Our customers can expect regular innovations that can be tailored into the driving lab priority whether it be reducing process steps, reducing waste, improving throughput, increasing lab uptime, and/or reducing environmental and health hazards.
Where can readers find more information?
Please visit the Buehler website pages:
https://www.buehler.com/sustainable-low-hazard-long-lasting-metallurgy-supplies.php.
https://www.buehler.com/social-responsibility.php
About Buehler
Buehler is a manufacturer of metallographic testing equipment including scientific instruments & supplies for cross-sectional material testing. Buehler’s sectioning, mounting, grinding and polishing, imaging and analysis, and hardness testing metallographic equipment along with consumables are used by metallurgical, metallography, petrography, research & development, university laboratories, quality control departments, and failure analysis facilities for the analysis of all types of materials, including ceramics, composites, semiconductors, metals, rocks and minerals, and plastics. Buehler is well established as the world's leading supplier of metallographic sample preparation and analysis instruments, equipment, supplies, and application solutions. Buehler is an ITW company, visit www.itw.com.
About Sarah Beranek
Sarah is the Commercial Director at Buehler. Sarah has been with the company since 2013 with previous roles in product management, engineering management, and most recently as the Glob
al Innovation Director. In her time at Buehler, she has implemented ITW’s customer-backed innovation process which is core to the ITW business model focusing product development initiatives on the needs of the customer. She has her BS in Materials Science Engineering from Purdue University and her MS in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University. 
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the interviewee and do not necessarily represent the views of AZoM.com Limited (T/A) AZoNetwork, the owner and operator of this website. This disclaimer forms part of the Terms and Conditions of use of this website.