At K 2025, the Reifenhäuser Group will demonstrate Industrial AI's full potential for productivity in plastics processing. With Reifenhäuser NEXT, plastics converters can reduce their dependence on highly qualified personnel and increase their overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

The Reifenhäuser NEXT portfolio is based on three product streams that seamlessly interlock: NEXT.AI, NEXT.Learning, and NEXT.Data.

NEXT.AI: Chatbot that provides real-time support

At the heart of NEXT.AI is an AI chatbot that provides real-time support to machine operators and service teams during ongoing operations. The AI accesses Reifenhäuser's comprehensive expertise in engineering, service, maintenance, and process technology, as wells as the user's documentation and live production data and if needed.

Operators receive immediately actionable recommendations via simple text inputs (prompts) in the chatbot. Thanks to this support, even inexperienced employees can achieve optimal results. This reduces downtime, lowers service costs, and makes production processes more efficient.

The NEXT.AI chatbot provides immediately actionable recommendations through prompts.

“They (the assistance systems) not only provide quick solutions to problems, but will also deliver proactive alerts and optimization suggestions in the future,” says Jan Karnath, Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of the Reifenhäuser Group.

NEXT.Learning: Knowledge as the key to success

To build up and establish the necessary expertise in the long term, NEXT.Learning offers a combination of on-site training and a digital learning platform. This is individually tailored to the needs of customers and helps them to retain expertise within the company despite staff turnover and make it available to new employees at any time.

Thanks to the use of AI avatars, customers can access the virtual training courses in over 100 languages. On request, Reifenhäuser NEXT can also adapt and provide content very quickly to meet customer-specific requirements.

NEXT.Learning offers virtual training courses in over 100 languages.

“Initial pilot projects have generated extremely positive feedback and highlight the added value of our solution, especially for international customers whose production employees speak different local languages and, for example, do not have sufficient English skills,” explains Karnath.

NEXT.Data: Generating added value from data

The third product stream, NEXT.Data, enables converters to exploit the full potential of their production data. The data is automatically aggregated via system integrations (e.g., OPC UA or GraphQL) and displayed in clear dashboards using the ExtrusionOS application suite.

ExtrusionOS is specially designed for the requirements of the plastics extrusion and packaging industry. Among other things, customers can use it to create real-time analyses and automated OEE calculations to make data-driven decisions.

With NEXT.Data, converters can generate real-time analyses and automated OEE calculations.

“Depending on customers’ requirements, we combine our NEXT.AI, Learning, and Data solutions, select the appropriate level of integration, and thus create the basis for operational excellence in line operation,” explains Karnath.