Maschinenbau

Why does German industry so well at the moment?

German industry has long tradition of "Maschinenbau" (machine construction). Today, this is seen by the huge number of companies designing and constructing machinery of all kind.

Many of those Maschinenbau companies are focusing on certain very narrow and high-tech area, typically making machines which are used in making other machines. Meanwhile other industries moved manufacturing to Asia, Maschinenbau companies have pretty much kept production in their own hands locally.

Typically these products are expensive and manufactured in small volumes, thus the cost benefit of mass production in Asia is not achieved. More important is to have highly skilled workers in assembly, and have fast feedback cycle from production back to the design department.

At the Hannover messe, I spotted number of products designed by my company, as usually. Among those customer references, I have picked up here couple of good examples of the spirit of Maschinenbau.

Beamex MC6 field calibrator.

Beamex provides world class field calibrators and communicators. Beamex is known for high-accuracy calibrators, and is the market leader on that specific sector. Not only sensors on field, but also the calibrator by itself needs to be calibrated every then and now. After-sales service is important part of the business. Needles to say that the company is doing very well and breaks it's own records year after year.

Epec 6107 Display Unit with Cortex-A9 multi-core CPU.

Epec design and manufacture control systems for vehicle environments, intended for companies how construct professional moving working machines like harvesters for example. Epec products are especially designed for hars environments, including vibration, moisture, and very wide temperature range. Epec is also doing very well, even if their business is more sensitive to the turbulence of global economy.

These two Finnish companies are good examples of why the German industry is doing so well. By focusing on very high tech domain and  having production of their own, this kind of companies are not threatened by Asian competition, but instead they are exporting to China in fact.