Heading for the champions league
Bayer Technology Services is looking for orders from the process industry

Bayer Technology Services was created in the course of restructuring the Bayer Group into four operative sub-groups. The legally independent service company is now looking to move up into the league of big-name engineering offices such as Jacobs Uhde, Foster Wheeler or Linde, in order to compete for large-scale projects from the chemical and pharmaceutical process industry.

In 2002, Bayer had worldwide revenue of 29.6 billion euros from sales of 10,000 different products, just about equaling the previous year’s performance. Investment volume was 2.6 billion euros, which was somewhat lower than the previous year. Bayer remains a technology-driven corporation. Around 40 percent of current turnover comes from products that were developed and brought to market during the past 10 years. Now Bayer has been under the direction of a holding company management committee. Four operative sub-groups and three service companies have been formed from a corporation that previously had 120,000 employees. The service companies primarily address the needs of their affiliated companies, but because they are legally independent they can also turn their attention to the external market.

One of these service companies is Bayer Technology Services (BTS). Dr Wolfram Wagner, general manager of the new company, explained at the Achema 2003 press conference that the company focuses mainly on process development and improvement, planning and construction of new production facilities, and provision of consulting services to customers during product development and optimization. As examples, he cited platform technology development for high-throughput screening, measurement and characterization methods developed in house, and generation of bankable feasibility studies for operators, investors and banks.
A solid foundation
Wagner pointed out that the collective experience of around 2,200 engineers and scientists is now available to external customers. What used to be an internal department at Bayer has been transformed into a medium-size company with backup from a large corporation. The company intends to play in the big leagues, competing with the likes of Jacobs, Uhde, Foster Wheeler or Linde for large contracts from the process industries. The technology manager is optimistic that this 100 percent Bayer subsidiary will remain the technological backbone of the Bayer corporation in the future.
The new company emerged from the former Bayer Central Engineering and Central Research units. Working from this base in 2002, total worldwide revenue reached 690 million euros – 45 million of which came from external customers. Projects are spread across the entire globe. BTS coordinates schedules, organizes construction sites, trains the operating team on simulators, and finally performs initial startup together with the customer. “We handle project and construction management on site, covering the entire spectrum from professional consulting services right up to lump sum turnkey projects,” explained Wagner. The most recent large projects with extensive BTS involvement are essentially polymer projects, very capital intensive and distributed around the world. However, there are also projects in the health care sector, where sterility and super cleanroom conditions play a key role.
Wagner explained that the company sees itself as a holistic problem solver. “Our experience in supply chain optimization, manufacturing execution systems, knowledge-based process control and control technology gives us the expertise to understand processes and manage technological complexity. We also use tools such as performance monitoring and asset management to optimize production flows, tackling issues ranging from energy consumption to raw material yields.”bad/kib