• Pilkington - First in Glass \
• Pilkington Information \
• About Pilkington \
• Pilkington - Company Briefing \
• Business Profile \
• Technical Leadership

Business Profile - Technical Leadership

Technical Leadership

Before the acquisition, the Pilkington/NSG relationship had centred on a co-operation agreement between the two companies’ automotive R&D activities, enabling joint automotive technology development and implementation. Both companies were founded on technological innovation in Flat Glass and the NSG Group intends to invest in sustaining this technology to create shareholder value and to be technological leader in the global glass industry. Pilkington played a key role in the industry’s technological advances in the 20th century including Sir Alastair Pilkington’s invention of the “float” glass process in 1952 (1). Today, the NSG Group’s technical and manufacturing resources are well integrated into global programmes that identify and respond to market needs and increase the efficiency of production. The Group’s Flat Glass business has successfully implemented a float line progressive repair strategy as an alternative to the traditional practice of plant shutdown for cold repair at the end of each campaign. This strategy has significantly reduced the capital investment required for some float line repairs.

The technology function has been developed to meet the needs of the building and automotive products business lines, ensuring that each has access to its unique technologies as well as those (such as glass composition and coating) which are common to both. Each business line operates a globally managed R&D programme and there are strong links between the two. The NSG Group is thus able to prioritise objectives on a global basis and rationalise its resources to remain cost efficient while maintaining its responsiveness to the need for cost reductions and new products.

Intellectual Capital

The NSG Group is a global leader in manufacturing excellence and innovation, notably in the areas of glass melting, glass forming by the float process, on-line coating and complex shaping technology, especially for automotive windscreens and backlights. The Group invested around JPY 15,500 million (approximately euro 96 million) in research and development in FY08. The NSG Group owns or controls approximately 5,000 patents and patent applications, predominantly in the fields of float glass production and processing and automotive glazing and also in the Information Technology field, and has access under licence to patents held by third parties. The Group has also been active in selective licensing of its patents and technology, in the areas of on-line coating, encapsulation (of automotive glazing) and rain sensors (for automotive glazing).

Innovation

The Pilkington brand is closely identified with technical excellence, having been associated, over the past fifty years, with most major advances in glass technology, including the invention of the Float Process. Notable Pilkington and NSG innovations over the years include:

• Energy-saving products such as Pilkington K Glass™ and Pilkington Energy Advantage™
• Advanced bending processes for making car windscreens in complex shapes to fine tolerances.
• Pilkington Pyrostop™ advanced fire-resistant glass.
• EZ-KOOL®, Sundym™ and Galaxsee™ solar control glass for cars.
• Solar reflective automotive glazing.
• Pilkington Solar E™, clear solar control glass, preventing heat build-up in buildings.
• Pilkington Planar™ structural glazing system.
• Pilkington Spacia™, vacuum glazing, high performance energy saving in a very thin unit.
• UMU™, switchable privacy glazing for internal partitions.
• The 3R™ clean air process for reducing nitrogen oxide emissions from glass furnaces.
• Pilkington Activ™ dual-action self-cleaning glass.
• Pilkington TEC™ range of glass for the Thin Film Solar sector and Pilkington SunPlus™ for the C-Si Solar sector.

(1)   This centred on the idea of forming a ribbon of glass by 'floating' the melted raw materials at high temperature over a bath of molten tin. The float glass process eventually replaced the twin grinding and polishing process for making plate glass to become the universal process for the manufacture of high quality glass.