Thermolympic is a family-owned plastic injection molding company founded by Urbano Millán in Utebo, Spain, in 1991. Originally focused on household goods, it later diversified into serving various industrial sectors. In 2001, leadership transitioned to Urbano’s son, Jorge Millán, who became Director of Operations, and Rebeca Millán took on the role of financial manager in 2010. The family values collaboration and has found success in both their personal and professional lives. They are currently planning for the future with a family protocol.
What is your current role in the CIRCULOOS project?
Thermolympic S.L. is part of Use Case 1: Controlling and recycling manufactured plastic. As an SME located in Zaragoza (Spain), our business is linked to the manufacturing of plastic industrial parts using all kinds of molding technologies.
In partnership with Contenedores Lolo and Canonical Robots, our company will contribute to the consortium as a demonstrator, offering our facilities and a rank of products, injection machines, and technicians that will prove the efficiency and usability of the different solutions and processes developed within the use case.
What specific challenges or opportunities do you hope to address or explore through your involvement in the project?
Within our sector, the hardships of the global economy in a highly competitive market and the current requirements for functional and appearance parts limit the opportunity to use for any kind of recycled material.
As the times advance, the processes for reusing or resell the scraped material are still on hold as economically and functionally viability, it’s more efficient to waste parts than to recycle them, blocking any kind of circularity. From our point of view, both as business and company are involved with the environment, we see the opportunity to push further our actual processes.
We hope to create new digital flows, and develop better shopfloor trends and company relationships that will open the reuse of this kind of materials; improving our competitiveness, demonstrating the feasibility of the use of this kind of materials within a highly monitored and controlled environment and reducing our environmental footprint.
How does your company’s participation in the CIRCULOOS project relate to your previous experiences in sustainability, digital transformation, or circular practices within your manufacturing processes?
Our company started a fully digital transformation in 2015, mostly related to quality and productivity purpose. As an ISO14001 certified company we envisioned the opportunity to expand this transformation to environmental sustainability and circularity.
This project will improve our circular indicator since it will provide us with relevant data, as currently, we don’t have the means to provide it. Thus, CIRCULOOS and the collaboration with the partners on the consortium is the logical approach.
How do you plan to collectively engage in knowledge-sharing and collaborative efforts, such as workshops, brainstorming sessions, or technical discussions, to enhance the project’s outcomes?
Thermolympic has a vast knowledge of the processes and direct contact with customers and suppliers where we can spread the results of the project. We are also usually invited to events within plastic clusters, where TIER1, OEMs and related companies usually share their knowledge, trends and objectives.
How do you see your involvement in the project contributing to the growth and innovation of the broader manufacturing ecosystem?
While most of the projects are focused on the digitalization and use of IoT data for improving processes, there is a lack of projects focused on the supply chain and the interrelationship and partnership between different companies and sectors. While the objective of each company within the use case is mostly related to individual development, we believe that CIRCULOS will be differentiative as the actual core of it is based on the grow of each part of a supply chain that basically is circular. In an ideal situation the knowledge shared will generate a marketplace where new value chains will arise, and new flows of circularity will be created.
What challenges do you foresee in adopting circular manufacturing practices within your organization?
Mostly the challenge is the authorization and approval by customers on the use of recycled plastics with the parts. The injection process stability and customer requirements are highly restricted to normative and homologation, leaving less to none margin to change any kind of production conditions.
The great challenge is to demonstrate and validate that using this kind of materials is viable and secure without creating any kind of impact in the result of the produced part.
What is your future vision of the project?
We do not see this project as a ‘complete and leave’ project, but as an opportunity to be part of a marketplace that grows and evolves into a place to find new partners with common goals.
