Buschjost Magnetventile, based in eastern Westphalia, is among the top tier of valve manufacturers. The company is bucking the trend for low-cost foreign production by manufacturing around three-quarters of its valves itself. One of the reasons it does this is to meet increasingly stringent quality requirements.

The TOP 100 company’s portfolio includes a dizzying array of products, as solenoid valves are almost always innovative custom-made products with properties that vary greatly depending on the intended use. Valves, for example, must reliably shut off, relieve, distribute or mix gases, vapors or liquids. The top innovator has gained in-depth expertise over decades to be able to provide all this, whether the customer needs pressure-, direct- or force pilot controlled valves.

The company is also a pioneer in the classification of the many types of valve. Buschjost has developed Ventilscout (valve scout), an online tool available to both employees and customers that provides a quick overview of the product portfolio. During the tool’s development, the relevant data of 56,000 products had to be digitalised and entered into a central database – work that was made easier by the smart data structure. Now, despite the constant increase in individual solenoid valves and rising complexity, "custom quotations can be prepared faster, without errors and with a suitable price, and sent out in no time", says managing director Marc Langejürgen.