The seminar on project planning for extrusion systems in the field of plastics processing is offered every year in the winter semester at Kunststofftechnik Paderborn. As part of this seminar, participants are given the task of designing a special extrusion line, taking into account technical and economic aspects. The students have one week to do this.
In the current winter semester, 16 students took part in a simulation game in four working groups under the guidance of Professor Volker Schöppner and research assistants Dennis Kleinschmidt and Dorte Trienens. The challenge was to manage the project planning of a fictitious plant for the production of agricultural film for a monthly customer requirement. Various cost accounting, project planning and time management tools were applied in practice.
In addition, the students were given the opportunity to independently produce films with customer-specific properties in laboratory tests at the plastics technology facility. These were then tested for their mechanical properties using a tensile test. By adjusting the process parameters of the laboratory system with the help of a scale-up, an optimal configuration was developed for the preparation of the offer.
Finally, all groups successfully met the customer's required specifications and completed the seminar. Special thanks go to the company LyondellBasell, whose donation of LDPE plastic granulate made this project seminar possible.
