NEW to YouTube: The RAMPF Corporate Sound
NEW to RAMPF: The Power of RAMPF - Corporate Sound of the RAMPF Group.
Listen in!
A comfy and stylish red couch stands in the foyer of RAMPF, specialist in the development of reactive resins made of polyurethane, epoxy and silicon and a leading manufacturer of materials for modelling and mould engineering. The red couch at RAMPF symbolises a module within the family-run company’s innovation management strategy. It is an integral part of the company’s “Innovation stars on the red couch” event series, which RAMPF organises for its employees several times a year – unusual for an SME. High-profile figures from the worlds of culture, business, sport and society who have shown courage and been successful in their chosen career are invited to take their place on the red couch. Britta Heidemann, Olympic gold medallist in épée fencing, was one such star from the sporting world. The very first innovation star to sit on the red couch was sound designer Peter Philippe Weiss, who received the red dot design award in 2009 for his outstanding design work. The sound designer’s visit kick-started the development of a musical composition that embodies the RAMPF group. The aim was to discover “the sound of RAMPF” and show that chemistry can make music. The basis for the RAMPF sound was created by the employees. You can listen to the end result on the company’s website and on YouTube.
Caption: Employees at RAMPF created the basis for the RAMPF sound. They captured the sound of the plastic specialist’s equipment and resins.
Caption: With support from a sound designer, the SME and resin specialist developed a corporate sound using instruments made by the employees of the RAMPF Group. These included a xylophone and panpipes made of typical company materials, such as board material or flexible foam. Images: RAMPF Holding.
It’s not often that an SME in the chemical sector develops a corporate sound, let alone in cooperation with its employees. RAMPF has created precisely this. Employees from development, production and sales passed through the production facilities and administration offices with recording devices to collect the daily sounds of their workplace. The final RAMPF sound shows the listener how the employees perceive their company. They also captured the sound of the equipment and resins using instruments they fashioned themselves from typical company materials, such as board material, foam gaskets and hardened test pieces. This gave rise to the sound of the company instead of studio music – dynamic, sustainable, global and inventive. Typical company noises, such as the beeping of the access control system or the whirring of the coffee machine when coffee flows into a cup, reflect the corporate sound. You can hear the sound of the device used to test the impact strength of plastic or the forklift transporting board material from RAMPF Tooling through the production hall. In other places, you can hear the sound of bird song from the surrounding natural environment, which points to the role that sustainability plays at the company. “If you listen carefully, you start to hear more and more sounds,” says Monika Welsch, employee in the R&D laboratory of RAMPF Giessharze, in describing the finished composition. “I can hear individual noises that I recorded myself. When I move through the company now, I tend to listen more closely to the sounds around me.” The sound project brought employees in different divisions closer together and encouraged everyone to listen and look at the company – where they work on a daily basis – in a different way. It is this very change in perspective that is needed in the de-velopment of two-component resins for sealing, bonding, foaming and casting in order to discover new properties of the reactive resins and open up unusual areas of application. “We were all curious to hear what our materials would sound like. A company needs elements of surprise like these to be innovative,” says Michael Rampf, CEO of RAMPF Holding, in describing the communication project.