TÜBİTAK Receives Support from Standard Profil

Standard Profil joined the '2244-Industrial Doctorate Programme' launched by TÜBİTAK to train qualified human resources with doctoral degrees needed by Turkish industry through university-industry collaboration. Standard Profil also received support from EU funds for its R&D work aimed at innovative product development. Sustainable growth and globalisation vision, Standard Profil, which places great emphasis on innovation applications in line with TÜBİTAK's (Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) initiative to train qualified human resources with doctoral degrees needed by industry through university-industry collaboration, was selected for the 2244 Industrial Doctorate Programme. Of the 188 projects accepted from 147 industrial companies and 47 universities that applied to the TÜBİTAK programme, 3 were from Standard Profil. Within the programme that supports more than 500 doctoral students and brings industry and universities together, Standard Profil will provide support at its Düzce and Manisa R&D centres, positioned as innovation hubs, to doctoral students from 9 Eylül, Ege and Özyeğin Universities in preparing their theses and completing their doctoral programmes. In projects involving academics from universities, Standard Profil experts will provide guidance to doctoral students both during their education and post-graduation employment periods. Doctoral students will be selected from both universities and Standard Profil. Within the programme scope, Standard Profil's Düzce R&D Centre is working with Özyeğin University on a project aimed at improving the performance of extrusion lines, while the Manisa R&D Centre will work with 9 Eylül University on TPV mould optimisation and with Ege University in a consortium with 5 different companies on pre-competitive research.

"We are contributing to human resources development and innovation in our country"

Dr. Ali Erkin Kutlu, Group R&D Director at Standard Profil, noting that thanks to the programme young people will complete their education through industry collaboration in a way that addresses the sector's needs, spoke about the Group's innovation efforts as follows: "At our Düzce and Manisa R&D centres, we work on innovative projects that offer customised solutions and ideas to our customers together with our researchers and specialists with master's degrees from universities. For Standard Profil, innovation involves work targeting materials and high-technology areas that consider sector expectations. As Standard Profil, with our R&D work we focus on the future of the automotive sector beyond the development of current projects, products and production systems. Through our R&D projects conducted under 4 main headings aimed at weight reduction, appearance, product life and acoustic performance improvements, our goal is to offer our customers different products and advantages in quality, performance and cost for existing products. Taking into account market expectations, changes and needs, we aim to develop technologies that guide our customers and the automotive sector in the sealing profile field."

Standard Profil accelerated open innovation work internationally

Standard Profil also received 2 years of support from EUREKA, an international R&D programme that encourages innovations aimed at developing products and processes that can be commercialised in a short time, with its COPOFI project. This project is the 2nd EUREKA project supported by Standard Profil Turkey. In the project, which also includes one company each from Turkey and Europe besides Standard Profil, work is being conducted on developing a more environmentally friendly, lower-cost and higher-performance surface coating method from input products used in the production process. Standard Profil's Logrono factory in Spain R&D centre, within its local and different EU projects, had its work within the STREAM-0D project under the HORIZON 2020 programme, which is a collaboration of 10 companies from 6 countries financed with EU funds, selected as a "key innovation project". The project, planned to be completed by the end of September 2020, aims to create an innovative control system integrated into production lines that can reduce product variability, increase line flexibility and achieve zero-defect manufacturing. In the STREAM-0D project, Standard Profil serves as the end-user company responsible for defining initial requirements and developing some of the solutions applied to the project, as well as validating project results.