Siegen is a city with a rich and eventful history, featuring many sights and buildings of special architectural or historical interest.
It is situated in the vicinity of three major German economic and cultural centers, namely the Rhine-Main area, the Cologne-Bonn area, and the Ruhr area. Thus, Siegen is well-connected to cities like Frankfurt, Cologne, and Düsseldorf, offering a wealth of cultural attractions.
Siegen is renowned for its historic old town, featuring the Upper Castle, St. Nicholas' Church with its distinctive “little crown,” and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Furthermore, it’s a very liveable town with a wide range of possibilities for recreational activities, including numerous cultural events and a great variety of sports activities.
Campus Buschhütten sees itself as an innovation hub for new industry with a focus on modern production technology. Beyond research in this area, it explicitly sees itself as a modern knowledge and technology transfer format.
The core idea is that university and industry work together here in two ways and organised as a partnership model ‘under one roof’: in the form of a university-technical REAL LAB with the goal of SMART PRODUCTION and as an industrial-technical REAL WORKSHOP with the goal of SMART EDUCATION. The initiative was initiated started in 2019 by the family-owned company Achenbach Buschhütten, which refurbished a 120-year-old disused factory building for this purpose while preserving its cultural heritage.
Two companies were founded specifically for this purpose: SDFS Smarte Demonstrationsfabrik Siegen GmbH as the heart of the REAL LAB and SLB Smarte Lernfabrik Buschhütten gUG as the heart of the real workshop. Several chairs at the University of Siegen and RWTH Aachen University were recruited as research partners. To date, more than 80 industrial partners, including several start-ups, have enrolled in the first three years.
At Campus Buschhütten, research projects and the deliberate involvement of non-university partners are being used to develop processes that make it possible to produce in a more environmentally sustainable manner using AI, while at the same time being economically successful. The proportion of circular economy topics is steadily increasing. In addition, the focus is on researching and demonstrating new manufacturing processes, such as additive manufacturing for metal in particular. The added value of this transfer of knowledge lies firstly in generating innovations that are particularly relevant to the economy and society, secondly in supporting the many regional small and medium-sized industrial companies in the digital transformation of their production processes, and thirdly in ensuring that theoretical and practical innovative insights are incorporated relatively quickly into university teaching as well as vocational training and further education.
Campus Buschhütten thus brings together research, demonstration, consulting, real production organized as micro factories (prototype manufacturing) and in addition university-level technical teaching and industrial-technical apprenticeship and vocational training. The large campus foyer is an attractive location for various transfer formats, events of partner companies, and conferences, particularly those organized by universities or professional associations. The guiding principle for all thinking and action at the Buschhütten Campus is: WE PRODUCE. FUTURE.
Last but not least, Campus Buschhütten has already made a name for itself as a so-called “third place” for the people of the region with selected cultural and community events such as citizen dialogues.
Campus Buschhütten
Siegener Str. 152
57223 Kreuztal
Germany
Achenbach is an independent family-owned company looking back on more than 570 years of history.
Today, Achenbach is a global provider of non-ferrous metal rolling mills with rolling oil and automation systems as well as foil slitting machines for winding, separating, and slitting thinnest metal foils and converting material. Following the company’s philosophy ‘everything from one single source’ the machines are designed, manufactured, and assembled at Achenbach.
Service & Support is provided through their entire operating life cycle. The range of products comprises turnkey production plants, machinery lines, single machines, or selected technology components.
The cloud-based platform Achenbach OPTILINK® opens the way to the overall system networking of the various value creation stages and therefore to the optimization of the entire production process.
The modernization of Achenbach machines and third party machinery completes the range of products.
History
1452 – 1846 local market
In January 1452, a waterwheel-driven Hammer Mill is founded at the rivers of the Ferndorf creek. As hammermen the three Busch brothers convert charcoal reduced pig iron into forgeable iron. According to their name the surrounding village is called: Buschhütten.
Forgeable iron bars are sold to finish forgers to make products for household, trade and agriculture, household tools like tongs, shovels, scythes, chops and agricultural equipment like hammers, anvils and plows
1846 – 1888 regional markets
The Achenbach Iron Foundry starts its operation after the Achenbach brothers had bought the hammer mill and convert it to iron casting technology. From then on, iron parts can be produced in a much simpler way by casting. Casting liquid iron into sand molds gets only possible with the availability of hard coals in the area.
Cast iron products primarily for household and agriculture and later for industry like column ovens, oven plates, stoves, gear wheels and rolling mill rolls.
1888 – 1945 national markets
Achenbach becomes Rolling Mill Builder: the first Achenbach Rolling Mill results out of the assembly of rolling components which are anyway casted in the iron foundry like rolls, stands and gears. Primarily sheet mills are produces and late after the invention of coilers by Achenbach engineers: strip mills.
Roling mills for metal sheets and later metal strips: Iron rolling mills, and later: Aluminium rolling mills, copper & brass rolling mills.
1945 – 1980 international markets
Achenbach becomes Specialist among the Rolling Mill Builders by concentration on the special requirements for rolling mills for non-ferrous metals with a big amount of R&D work. Caused by the growing importance of process technology and environment protection the product range ist complemented by new rolling oil filtration systems and exhaust air purification systems.
Rolling mills for non-ferrous metals for strips and later on foils; non-ferrous metals rolling mills: ‘wider, faster, thinner rolling’, integration of rolling oil filtration and exhaust air purification systems operating economically and ecologically highly efficient in closed loop processes.
1980 – UNTIL TODAY world market
The System Provider Achenbach is ‘Specialist’ and in substantial parts ‘World Market Leader’ in the development and provision of machines and technologies for flat rolling and foil slitting of non-ferrous metals. For this purpose, the product range is successively extended by rolling mill automation technology, foil slitting machines and recently by an IoT platform for the optimization of the entire production process.
‘All from one single source’ equipment for the production of rolled and slitted non-ferrous metal strips and foils, horizontally along the value-added chain and vertically by the increase of value-added depth; complete production plants from ‘Mini-Plants’ up to ‘Greenfield Plants’ by use of a digital process data network (IoT), single machines, machinery and plant modernization, machine components and spare sparts.
LightMAT 2027
10 - 12 March 2027 | LightMAT in Siegen (Germany) & online
LightMAT 2027
10 - 12 March 2027 | LightMAT in Siegen (Germany) & online
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