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Interview 19 February 2020

Interview with Arno Kühn: “The Digital Transformation Needs a Strategy”

What are the first steps that need to be taken toward digitization? Where does the potential for optimization lie? What do the corporate processes look like at the moment? We discussed the opportunities and risks, challenges and visions for the future with Dr. Arno Kühn, director of the Product and Production Management department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechatronic Systems Design IEM in Paderborn, Germany.

Legacy processes and structures, demographic changes and the digital transformation are challenges related to Industry 4.0. In particular, what are the future challenges facing medium-sized control cabinet manufacturers?

The challenges are multi-layered. A crucial one is customer-specific production – the key concept is “lot size 1.” Customers want their control cabinet produced as quickly as possible. For the production department, that requires a high degree of flexibility in the face of ever-shortening throughput times. And more intense foreign competition, in Eastern Europe for example, isn’t making things any easier. Many companies are becoming more and more tempted by the notion of shifting larger portions of their control cabinet production there. Last but not least, the growing skills shortage is a challenge: Keeping pace with large companies and hiring competent people is even harder for small and medium-sized control cabinet manufacturers.