[ Case Study · Foundry & Automotive ]

Buderus Guss: 18 million car brake discs per year – with [FP]-LIMS for over 20 years

How the European market leader for passenger car brake discs (a Bosch company) covers 20 percent of European demand – with hundreds of daily sample analyses that would leave production “blind” without LIMS.

CompanyBuderus Guss GmbH (Bosch Group)
IndustryFoundry · Car brake discs
Edition[FP]-LIMS Professional
In use since20+ years
[ About the Company ]

European Market Leader for Passenger Car Brake Discs

Buderus Guss is recognized globally as a leading manufacturer of high-quality passenger car brake discs. The German producer stands for premium materials, state-of-the-art production processes, outstanding quality – for safety and perfection with tradition.

Well-known automotive manufacturers in Europe and customers in Japan and South Korea are supplied with brake discs for both original equipment and the original spare parts service. Since 2005, Buderus Guss has been part of Robert Bosch GmbH, today assigned to the Chassis Systems Control business unit.

The company is at the forefront of the lightweight brake disc segment. Through innovation in disc materials and in the connection technology between friction ring and pot, Buderus Guss engineers have achieved weight reductions of up to 24 percent on many model variants compared to conventional brake discs.

Buderus Guss Logo
[ Production in Numbers ]

Industrial Scale at the Breidenbach Plant

The Breidenbach plant produces passenger car brake discs at impressive volumes – making Buderus Guss the European market leader in this segment.

18M
OEM passenger car brake discs per year
20%
of European demand
−24%
weight reduction on lightweight discs
100s
sample analyses per day
[ Product Portfolio ]

Vented Brake Discs for OEM and Original Spare Parts Service

Buderus Guss brake disc

Brake disc by Buderus Guss · Image: Buderus Guss GmbH

Around 18 million OEM passenger car brake discs leave the Breidenbach plant every year – either ready-machined for installation or as raw castings. They go to automotive assembly lines for integration into suspension strut modules or rear axles.

That makes Buderus Guss the European market leader, covering 20 percent of European demand for passenger car brake discs. The focus: vented brake discs for original equipment and original spare parts service of passenger cars and light commercial vehicles.

Today, the Breidenbach plant manufactures single-piece, multi-piece and innovative brake discs. Through continuous development and an expanded product portfolio, the company aims to meet ever-changing customer requirements even more strongly going forward.

[ Why Quality Is Mandatory ]

Brake Discs for the Automotive Industry – Quality Is Mandatory

Compliance with quality standards in passenger car brake disc production isn’t a “nice to have” – it’s an essential safety feature. The automotive industry’s requirements are correspondingly high, and Buderus Guss has always set strict internal quality norms beyond what is externally required.

Continuous Process Monitoring

Standardized QA systems cover the entire production chain – from raw material to finished disc.

Highly Qualified Personnel

Trained and motivated staff ensure that only top-quality components ever leave the plant.

Hundreds of Samples/Day

Daily sample analyses with specialized measurement methods – brake-disc-grade material certainty.

[ 20+ Years of LIMS ]

Simplified Data Management and Analytics with [FP]-LIMS

For managing all this laboratory data, the company has relied on the LIMS from Fink & Partner for more than 20 years. Originally introduced together with a spectrometer, [FP]-LIMS has become an indispensable part of daily operations.

Multiple users across production and quality assurance work intensively with the lab software. Custom quality thresholds defined for every brake disc allow production staff to quickly check sample results and, if necessary, make corrections directly in the manufacturing process.

The LIMS is essential to the company particularly for data capture and analysis. Data is forwarded to systems like CAQ – enabling extensive reporting capabilities within quality assurance.

Buderus Guss production

Production at Buderus Guss · Image: Buderus Guss GmbH

Production would be practically blind without the LIMS.
Sebastian Hellfeier (Dipl.-Ing.) Materials Engineering · Buderus Guss GmbH
[ Daily Use ]

Lean, Focused, User-Friendly

What Sebastian Hellfeier values most about [FP]-LIMS: the combination of user-friendliness with a lean, focused feature set – everything the lab needs, nothing it doesn’t.

Easy Onboarding

New employees become productive quickly – the interface is intuitive.

Lean Solution

All the functionality required – without overloading the system with features no one uses.

CAQ Integration

Data flows seamlessly to downstream systems – enabling rich QA reporting.

The LIMS solution is very user-friendly, which makes onboarding new employees very easy. What I particularly like is the leanness of the solution. It offers all the functionalities it needs to – without being overloaded.
Sebastian Hellfeier (Dipl.-Ing.) Materials Engineering · Buderus Guss GmbH
[ Then & Now ]

20+ Years of [FP]-LIMS – The Big Picture

Back Then

The Beginnings

  • [FP]-LIMS acquired together with a spectrometer
  • First centralized capture of sample analyses
  • Single data foundation for materials engineering
  • The basis for safety-critical brake disc quality
Today · with [FP]-LIMS

Market Leader Level

  • 18M brake discs per year quality-assured
  • 20 % of the European market covered
  • CAQ integration and QA reporting
  • Real-time corrections directly from production
[ Next Step ]

Quality-Assuring Safety-Critical Components?

See in 30 minutes how [FP]-LIMS can support your quality assurance in automotive foundry production – lean, user-friendly, with CAQ integration. Free, no sales pressure.