3M opens us the doors of his incubator of ideas for Spain and Portugal
The past month of November,
The new Centre of Innovation of 3M Iberia is situated beside the central offices of the company in Madrid and his development has supposed a near investment to the six million euros. For the construction of the building have employed around 40 different products of the range 3M, what has favoured the obtaining of the certificate READ Platinum of the US Green Building Council that rewards the “healthy practices, durable, economic and solid medioambientalmente in the design and the construction of buildings”.
Façade of the new Centre of Innovation of 3M Iberia in Madrid.
In the Centre of Innovation of 3M of Madrid, one of the 36 that the company has already all over the world (to the margin of 85 global laboratories additional), work some 40 highly qualified people in the fields of the technology and the innovation.
In his four plants, the Centre receives different areas and installations, like an exhibition to know the history and the technologies 3M (what knows like ‘Experience 3M'), versatile spaces for the celebration of meetings with customers and rooms instrumented for demonstrations and sessions of learning.
History of 3M
At all more go in in the new building the visitor finds with an enormous sculpture in which it reflects the history of more than 110 years of the company. The origins of 3M Corporation trace back to the year 1902 in Minnesota (EE UU) like mining company and his name does reference to the three ‘emes' initial of his original designation in English: ‘Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing, Co'. In spite of manufacturing today more than 55.000 different products for sectors so diverse like the Industry, the hygiene, the care of the health, the electronic-power or the consumption, 3M has not abandoned his origins, the minería. In fact, a mobile projector of 3M was the only form of communication with the outside that had the 33 Chilean miners that saw sepultados under earth in 2010 in the Saint mine José.
With the years 3M was diversifying his range, betting always by the innovation like supreme value of his work. This is what has allowed him consolidate like one of the companies more vanguardistas of the world, with more than 38.500 patents in his have. In 1905 it manufactured his first paper of lija, going in like this in the sector of the abrasive, a market in what follows being one of the big world-wide referents (in 1921 would expand even more his presence in this industry with the first lija to the water).
Susana To. Lallena, engineer of Development of Applications R&D in 3M Spain, went the attendant to do of guide for the journalists during the visit to the new centre.
In 1925 would take place another historical milestone in 3M with the presentation of the first strip enmascaradora, a development that changed the procedure that until then came employing to paint the trucks, improving notably the quality of these works. This innovative launching supposed the big road of entrance of 3M in the sector of the automotive sector and the postventa, that to day of today keeps on being very important for the company and in which it has followed entering new and innovative products. It is the case of the Integral Solution of Manufacturing of Painting (PPS), that has presence in increasingly workshops.
Inner of the new Centre of Innovation. In the low plant can see the tactile table with the 46 technological platforms.
1930 supposed the starting signal for another marked development with letters of gold in the history of 3M. We speak of the adhesive strip Scoth, more known coloquialmente in Spain like ‘zeal' and whose original name does reference to the initial strategy that employed the company to reduce costs applying adhesive only in the edges of the strip. This caused that a customer lined to the company ‘to be so stingy like the Scottish (scottish)', which by that period did not have fame in EE UU for being precisely very splendid with the cost of money.
In 1939, 3M went in in another of his fundamental fields, the one of the hygiene Vial, with the first reflective plate Scotchlite, and in 1957 penetrated in the market of the telecommunications/power, with the first connectors for cables of copper.
To finals of the decade of the 50, 3M implants in Spain, first with some offices in the Walk of the Castellana (1957) and later with the factory of Rivas-Vaciamadrid, cradle later of the famous mark Scotch-Brite. In 1966 this subsidiary expanded his field of performance, implanting also in Portugal.
Room of projection of the solutions 3M for the sector of the automotive sector.
The innovations of 3M have gone even much more there of our planet. In fact it can say that this company was the first in stepping the Moon since when Neil Armstrong went out of Apollo 11 on 21 July 1969, carried under his feet an antideslizante of 3M.
Something more mundane ‘', a classical in a lot of offices and homes, is another of the big developments of 3M, the adhesive notes Post-it, officially launched in the year 1980 but whose true origin find it in 1966. This is a clear example of a product that began being a defective development to finish consolidating like a world-wide success. The researcher Art Fry, that had a lot of problems to mark the pages in his book of psalms when it went to pray, remembered that a his mate had refused an adhesive several years before because it did not hit well. It decided to employ it to create adhesive notes ‘of remove and put' and at the end his example was imitated by increasingly mates of work, until attaining his commercialisation.
More recent still is another innovation that, although it is not so known by the public in general, yes revolutionised the electrical industry. It treats of the system of contractile connection in cold QS 200, launched in the year 1985 and that facilitated enormously the electrical installations to the not to need already equipment of heat.
‘Periodic table'
In 1975, 3M developed the base on which at present works. As if it was the periodic table of the chemical elements, the company has gone identifying 46 technological platforms on which operates to level of investigation and development, establishing thanks to this configuration links of union between markets and applications apparently extraneous, in an effort for finding real solutions for the needs of his customers and consumers. Examples of these technological platforms are: abrasive, nanotechnology, image, flexible electronics equipment dealers equipment dealers, sensors, modification of surfaces, etc. The 46 technological platforms can know in depth in the main plant (plant 0) of the new centre of innovation of Madrid thanks to a big tactile table in which it describes each one of them, through products, historical milestones and videos.
Also in the main plant of the new centre situates a special room in which they project , on a mould of vehicle, images of the solutions that can offer the company in matter of automotive sector, repair of vehicles (workshop) and hygiene vial. And in said plant, the visitors will find equally an area of virtual visualisation (thanks to an application for tablets) of the solutions with which explains 3M for the industry, home, cities and hospitals, and a last interactive area devoted to that the invited know they same the utility of the innovations of 3M through different experiments.
Laboratories and centres of experimentation
In three of the four plants of the new Centre deliver the different Laboratories and Centres of Experimentation (the fourth plant is reserved fundamentally for offices). In the main plant, beside the hall of entrance, find the destined to Abrasive and to Adhesive, where investigates and tests with new products, in addition to serving of rooms of learning for customers of both markets.
In the low plant (-1) find two of the Laboratories and Centres of Experimentation more striking of the Centre. On the one hand, the destined to the Development of Solutions of Repair of the Car, with a recreation of a workshop where no lacking neither an alone detail. This zone has an area of sheet, where experiences with the putty, lija, etc; and an area of painting formed by a room where prepares the mix and another camera where applies this to the vehicle. Two clear examples of innovation of 3M in this field are the lamp that simulates the natural sunlight and that allows to see faithfully the colour that will have this car when it go out to the street, and the ‘plates chameleon', some adhesive layers that they can be withdrawn of the once finished workshop the work of painting to keep the always clean installations.
Like second highlight of this plant is the Room of Essay of Technologies of hygiene Vial, where the visitor, between other things, can appreciate perfectly the reflective capacity of the different products developed by 3M for the signaling of our streets and roads.
Destined zone to that the visitors experience in case same the utility of different developments of 3M.
In the first plant finds the rest of Laboratories and Centres of Experimentation. One of them is devoted to hygiene and Personal Protection and in him investigates in fields so diverse like the systems for the control of access of people, products to realizar the inventory of a shelving in a library, carpets, reflective cloths or equipment of personal protection, among others many.
Another of the rooms is allocated to pharmaceutical products, from tiritas until kneepads going through the famous osito of cold-heat of Nexcare. Also there is a room for decoration and hygiene vial, where works , for example, in filters for windows that allow to go in the light but no the heat, or elements of hygiene for our roads. Remarkable equally is the room of Materials advanced, alimentary hygiene and leak, where the visitor can discover, for example, the filter that makes possible that the water used for the drunk refrescantes of an important signature of fast food know the same in any part of the world.
One of the greater spaces of the new centre is occupied by the laboratory and centre of experimentation devoted to the care of the health, where has re-created a hospitable operating theatre to experience with solutions that avoid the transfer of germs, as well as a dental cabinet for testar all type of products 3M destined, especially, to fillings and orthodontics. The company, for example, has developed a scanner intraoral that avoids to use the traditional moulds to reproduce the form of the dentures of the patients, and also is curious to know how an adhesive that has developed this company to realizar fillings goes to be used now in the aerospace industry.
Laboratory and Centre of Experimentation allocated to hospitable solutions.
The last room is the one of power and telecommunications that, to the equal that the rest, is allocated to the learning and to the generation of new products adapted to the peculiarities of each one of the customers. For this 3M account in these installations with a printer 3D that allows to realizar prototypes of plastic in hardly some hours, what speeds up enormously the works of R&D. To day of today, this department devotes the big majority of his time to the installations of optical fibre.
