Anyone who takes on responsibility for packaging for the first time has many questions and little time. From now on, once a month, the Flexpack Story tells how Innoform makes its knowledge from around 30 years easier to find – with artificial intelligence, human experience, and a healthy dose of curiosity. Episode 1 begins where good stories often start: with a bottleneck.
A Tuesday morning, a stand-up pouch
Let’s call her Lena. Lena is 29, has been a project manager at a film converter for six months, and since yesterday has been responsible for a stand-up pouch that needs to become recyclable without losing its barrier properties. On her desk lies a data sheet, in her inbox a customer question about migration. And ringing in her ears is the sentence from her predecessor: “That’s all in there somewhere at Innoform.”
Somewhere. That was precisely the catch for a long time. “Somewhere” meant: in hundreds of technical articles, podcast episodes, conference presentations, seminars – and in the minds of people who have been testing, explaining, and passionately discussing films for around 30 years. A treasure, no question. Just one without a map.
A wish list longer than the day
At Innoform, people were well aware of the problem – and had ideas to address it. A search that understands questions instead of keywords. Pages that speak English too. Registering for a seminar without detours. But all these ideas politely waited in line. Because the web developers who could have built them were fully booked, as good developers usually are.
In the spring of 2026, something happened that you wouldn’t necessarily expect from a company that normally tests films and runs seminars: they started coding themselves. Without textbooks or evening classes, but in conversation with an AI that writes the code while a human describes what they actually need. In tech circles, this is called “vibe coding”. At Innoform, it simply meant: let’s give it a try.
The decisive factor in this is still not the code. What matters is who is suddenly at the wheel: people who know what a heat seal has to withstand – and which question is really asked during the coffee break of a seminar. The AI brings the speed. The human brings the 30 years of experience.
The first building blocks
Trying things out surprisingly quickly turned into tangible results. Anyone who has visited the Innoform pages in recent months may have already encountered some of them without realizing where they came from:
- A search that listens. Since July, the Event Selection Tool has been answering full questions – for example: “Which seminars are available on the recyclability of PP packaging?” It understands several languages and suggests suitable seminars, web seminars, and INNO-Talks.
- A memory for flexpack. Shortly afterwards, the knowledge search on the News page followed: it browses more than 780 technical articles, podcast episodes, and recordings and presents the relevant findings.
- One question, two answers. The INNO-finder combines both: under “Knowledge” you will find Innoform’s publications on a particular topic; under “Education” you will find the event where you can explore the topic in more detail.
- Reading with your ears. Articles on inno-talk.de can now be read aloud – practical for the train ride to a customer. And at the end of many articles, further links await anyone who already has the next question after the first answer.
And in the engine room? Things are being fine-tuned there as well. Event2Go, the platform through which Innoform customers book their seminars, web seminars, and conferences, has been getting a new core step-by-step since autumn. First traces are already visible: in-house training sessions have found a home of their own with INNOin, and more and more pages are also available in English. More on this in episode 2.
What it’s actually about
You could take all this for a story about technology. It is rather one about openness, curiosity, and a recognized need for action. Innoform Testservice tests films and packaging on behalf of its customers. The experience gained from this – regarding test methods, standards, and typical pitfalls – has always flowed into technical articles, podcasts, seminars, and conferences. The fact that this knowledge requires new formats was already a topic of discussion at Innoform back in the summer. What’s new is that it no longer waits patiently to be found. It comes to meet you.
The division of labor remains clear. The AI sorts, translates, and finds. What is correct is still decided by humans. If the search doesn’t know a technical term yet, it suggests new terms week after week – approved by people who know that a doypack and a stand-up pouch mean the same thing.
And Lena? She simply typed in her question on that Tuesday, just as she would have asked a colleague. Two technical articles and a podcast episode later, she knew what mattered for her pouch – and which web seminar to save for next. So her predecessor was right after all. It’s all at Innoform. Just no longer somewhere.
What happens next
In the future, the Flexpack Story will be published mid-month. Episode 2 goes down into the engine room and shows what is changing around booking and attending events. Until then: browsing is explicitly encouraged.
The Flexpack Story is created just as it tells: written by an AI, reviewed and approved by humans at Innoform. Lena is fictional – her questions are not.
