Starlinger intern, 2024/01 - Issue 36

the time of his travels. During those years, he also worked on the design of the Austrofil ® spinning systems for textile yarn filaments, which were later taken over and further developed by SML and are still marketed under this brand name today. In 1999, the position of Group Manager of the Extrusion Design Department – tape extrusion and coating lines – became vacant, and Fürst took over. This saw him play a key role in the development of the first stacoTEC coating plant. At that time, Starlinger was supplying the first AD*STAR ® bag conversion lines, and the coating machines required for AD*STAR ® bag manufacturing were supplied by SML, a former competitor that has been part of the Starlinger Group since 1995. “One day, the Managing Director Mr Cada came up to me and said: “Construct one of our own – we’re not gonna keep giving business to the guys from Lenzing.” So we built the first Starlinger stacoTEC coating line.” Kurt Cada turned out to be right – in only a few years, the number of stacoTEC lines manufactured each year multiplied. The world’s largest tape extrusion line for woven bags at the time – the starEX 2000 – was also created under Fürst’s leadership. In 2005, he was appointed head of the design department. It was a turbulent start: After the split with W&H, the company had to build its own AD*STAR ® conersion line. The ad*starKON 60 was developed and made ready for production in just a few months. Over the years, it was followed by the ad*starKON SX, adstar*KON HX and adstar*KON SX + , our most successful bag conversion systems. Herbert Fürst reflects on 19 years in design engineering: “It’s always a challenge. My field of activity has changed massively, especially in the last few years. In the 90s, we were 22 design engineers back in the ‘Tower’, whereas today there are 118 of us here in the new wing. Sure, it’s still the same chair and the same office I’m sitting in, but the daily routine is completely different: a lot more work on patents, a lot more HR agendas.” He’s also come to realise one or two things: “When you embark on innovative projects, you need to be sure that you have all the necessary resources: Do we have the people? Do we have the space? Do we have the expertise? Do we have the programmer? In mechanical engineering, nothing works without digitisation these days.” Herbert Fürst has had many special experiences during his 35 years at Starlinger. Which of those stand stand out in particular? “Definitely the team spirit among the colleagues. I think the Starlinger ethos is what has stood out over the years. And the fact that the management shows understanding when things don’t work out as planned and takes a considered approach. That’s certainly not the case in many other companies.” What is it that keeps Herbert Fürst motivated today? “I value the teamwork among colleagues even more than the technical challenges. Teamwork really suits me. I love working on something as a team. We are lucky to have a lot of good employees who are the backbone of our new developments – that’s really cool. And, of course, there’s the construction of the new Starlinger Technology Center on our property between Berndorf and Pottenstein – I really want to be there when it will be officially opened.”

HERBERT FÜRST

35 YEARS AT STARLINGER – OF SHUTTLE DOCTORS, TEAMWORK AND CAMARADERIE 1989 – the Iron Curtain is drawn and the Berlin Wall falls. After a rather informal application over the phone, Herbert Fürst starts his job as a machine designer at Starlinger on 2 January of this eventful year. “I was in my final week of military service at the end of November 1988. At that time, there was a newspaper called “Arbeitsmarkt” ("Labour Market") in the district of Baden. I picked it up at the job centre in Berndorf, opened it and it said ‘Starlinger Maschinenbau Weissenbach is looking for design engineers’ followed by a telephone number,” Herbert Fürst recalls. “So I rang up and reached Johann Brandstätter, who was Head of Design at the time.” He was called in for an interview the next day and had to impress the ‘Top Three’ in the company – the owner Franz Huemer, Managing Director Kurt Cada and Head of Design Johann Brandstätter. They hired him straight away after a 30-minute conversation. A qualified agricultural machinery technician who graduated from HTL Wieselburg, Herbert Fürst started his career at Starlinger in the loom design department, where he also worked in assembly and as a commissioning and service technician. At that time, Starlinger still manufactured a relatively large number of customised looms, and specialists like Fürst were needed to install and commission them at the customer. “That made me somewhat exotic – most design engineers tended to stay in Weissenbach. In 1991, for example, I travelled to Yantai in China on my own for the first time – going on an assembly trip was a real adventure back then.” He has also travelled to Indonesia, the USA and Mexico, among other places. “After four or five weeks, often in the middle of nowhere, you get to know the real conditions under which our customers work: In Asia, the so-called shuttle doctors still walk around barefoot or in flip-flops between the looms and repair the shuttles. These are invaluable experiences that I won’t forget. And you realise what the most important aspects of machine design in many cases are: robust construction and easy operation.” He also got to grips with the technical developments of competitors, which were still abundant in the loom sector at

26