Displaying items by tag: Schmersal

Germany: Schmersal Group has appointed Jörg Kraus as its Sales Manager for Germany. He will be responsible for areas including continued development and implementation of the group’s sales strategy and sales process optimisation. He will lead a sales team and will be responsible for sales representatives and external service providers.

Kraus holds experience in the sale of technical components and capital goods in complex industries, such as mechanical and plant engineering, metals, technical gases and surface technology. He has also established and managed local sales and service organisations in Germany, Switzerland and Poland, as well as the development of new business areas. He has worked for subsidiaries of Alberts Surface since 2019. Prior to this he was employed by Linde Group for over 20 years.

Finland: Advancetec has changed its name to Schmersal Finland. The company was originally founded in 1993 in Helsinki as a sales company for automation technology. Germany-based Schmersal Group entered into a sales cooperation with Advancetec in the 1990s and eventually fully acquired the company in 2019.

Schmersal Finland sells products from the Schmersal portfolio and the safety services of Schmersal’s services division under the brand name tec.nicum, primarily in Finland and Estonia. Customers include well-known companies from the sectors paper manufacturing, food processing, robotics, marine industry and heavy industry.

Jukka Harmoinen, the managing director of Schmersal Finland, said “The new name will make it easier for us to increase the visibility of the Schmersal brand in Finland. In the future we would like to expand our product range and to develop new projects in cooperation with engineering and consulting companies.”

Germany: Schmersal Group has asked its Russian sales partner to suspend the supply of safety switchgear and systems. It said that the action was not easy for the company as it meant stopping a ‘noticeable’ sales volume. Managing director Philip Schmersal said, "We do not want to contribute to the economy and production of a country that disregards the sovereignty of another country and brings great suffering to its people.”

Thailand: Germany-based Schmersal has appointed Passara Hongwisat as the managing director of Schmersal Thailand. She has 18 years of professional experience in sales and channel management for information technology and industrial products and worked in the automation industry for five years. Hongwisat studied Electronic Engineering at King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok.

Schmersal Thailand was founded in Bangkok in 2019 as a subsidiary of the Schmersal Group and focuses on sales and marketing activities to increase the supply of products for machine safety in Thailand.

China: Germany-based Schmersal Group has appointed Michele Seassaro as the managing director of Schmersal Industrial Switchgear based in Shanghai. He has been managing the group’s China-based subsidiary since the start of March 2021.

Seassaro, aged 52 years, was born in Milan, Italy and has more than 20 years of international management experience, including in Europe, North Africa and Asia Pacific. Over the past ten years, he has held senior positions in various companies in the consumer goods and food industry in China. He holds a law background as well as an Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) degree from China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and studied the Chinese language at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Schmersal operates a production plant in the Qingpu district of Shanghai. It produces position and safety switches as well as lift switchgear for the Asian market. The company also operates a number of sales offices across China.

Germany: Schmersal has presented the prototype of the HDS switchgear wireless data transmitter for use with extended conveyor systems. The company says that it developed the products, prototypes of which are still undergoing laboratory tests, in partnership with customer-specific hardware developer Aconno. It says, “The switchgear unites a range of functions into a single platform, making it suitable for an extremely wide range of applications. Typical application areas include emergency-stop shutdown, belt misalignment monitoring in the transport of bulky materials, end position monitoring in steel making and level monitoring in material silos.”

Many people have been adapting to home working over the last few months due to the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting lockdowns. The digital tools have been present for years but current events were all that was needed to force everyone to try it out en masse, moving much of the back office, supporting and managerial functions to the homes of staff. Some of this communal clerical working may never come back in the views of some commentators. Other functions related to networking, such as sales or knowledge transfer, have moved to different channels like webinars and social networking or have resorted to older methods like using the telephone more. The balance between real world and remote networking may change but a return to some level in favour of the former seems likely.

The core processes of cement manufacture are resistant to this trend as workers need to be on site to mine limestone and maintain production lines. Although, that said, Global Cement Magazine has covered examples of remote commissioning and maintenance of equipment at plants in recent issues. Prior to this there has been steady work on remote monitoring of equipment and plants by both suppliers and producers and moves by cement companies to focus on digital operation such as LafargeHolcim’s ‘Plants of Tomorrow’ Industry 4.0 from 2019 or Cemex’s work on autonomous cement plant operations with Petuum.

Some ways in which cement companies have coped with social distancing recently have been revealed as they have published their best practice guides. Last week, for example, Holcim Philippines was promoting its various online customer interaction tools including its existing sales platform and a new online customer engagement program to ‘provide updates on the company’s directions, share knowledge and best practices on Health and Safety and to bond with business partners while quarantines are in place.’ Other companies have done similar things like the Cemex Go platform. On the supplier side there have been various announcements as companies have pushed their digital offerings. Meanwhile, the companies offering automation or remote operation products have been handed a unique stage to promote their wares.

Another example of cement companies trying something new in digital is the pilot that was announced this week by Siam Cement Group with the Bank of Thailand to test out payment systems using a central bank digital currency (CBDC). This likely has very little to do with the cement industry and much more to do with the sheer size of that conglomerate in Thailand. As the second largest company in the country, it’s an obvious target to try out something new like this at scale. The project will run from July 2020 until the end of the year. It will build on work that the central bank has carried out on Project Inthanon, a project between the bank and the eight financial institutions to study and develop a method for domestic wholesale funds transfer using wholesale CBDC. Any benefits using a CBDC eventually bring to Siam Cement Group and other producers in the country are likely to be limited to finance departments but savings are always welcome wherever they arise.

One cautionary note to consider though is that introducing changes to national currency systems can have impacts upon cement companies through general effects to the economy as a whole. The classic example of this in recent years is that of banknote demonetisation in India in late 2016. Cement production growth declined for about half a year at the time due to the disruption it caused.

The downside of this increased reliance on digital products and platforms is increased exposure to cybercrime. There was a rare good-news story in this area recently when Schmersal Group revealed that it had intercepted a network attack in progress in May 2020. It promptly took its IT network offline and disconnected its various systems, from the telephones, to its business software, to its production processes and automated storage systems, at all of its locations. Systems were then gradually cleansed and restored over the next two weeks. Schmersal’s response is commendable but chillingly it ended its press release by saying that, “the attack demonstrated that standard protection from antivirus programs and a firewall is powerless in the event of a targeted attack with previously unknown malware.” Companies had the same vulnerabilities before the pandemic but the increased reliance on digital platforms has heightened the potential risk. As we mentioned last time we covered this topic companies that admit to large scale malware attacks are hard to find most likely because it looks bad. Although since that article was published, Buzzi Unicem admitted that a ransonware attack on its information systems originating from its Ukrainian operations were delaying its financial disclosures in mid-2017.

In the longer term it will be interesting to see how much of the altered working patterns or methods created by the coronavirus lockdowns remain afterwards. The current situation isn’t quite like the ‘disruptive innovation’ business theory pedalled by Clayton M Christensen that has led in-part to established companies setting up start-up incubators to try and spot the next big new thing. Yet, existing trends are being sped up and this may lead to some surprises that were coming down the road anyway. For example, buying someone shares in video networking tool Zoom would have made a nice Christmas present this year! Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Germany: Schmersal says it is once more connected to the internet and fully operational following a cyber attack on 20 May 2020 that forced it to shut down its local networks and go offline. During the incident the engineering company reacted to a malware injection in progress and stopped the criminals from completing the attack. Systems were gradually restored over the following two weeks.

Managing director Philip Schmersal said, “Situations like these really highlight how dependent companies now are on IT. Making telephone calls, e-mails, accepting orders – we had to find alternative channels for every process. We worked extremely hard to keep in contact with our customers in every conceivable way and to keep them up to date.” Schmersal thanked “customers for their understanding and all employees for their tremendous dedication in this testing time.”

Turkey: Germany-based safety specialist Schmersal announced its entry into business at a new branch in Istanbul, Turkey on 21 January 2020. In partnership with Satech Safety Technology, it will supply its full range of products and comprehensive services to the Turkish and Azerbaijani cement sectors. Bariş Yücel, managing director of Schmersal Turkey, said, "Schmersal is already a well-known manufacturer on the Turkish market. Our goal is to become customers’ first choice supplier.”

Thailand: Germany’s Schmersal has founded Schmersal Thailand to serve the machine safety and systems solutions needs of Thailand’s growing industries, including its 42.4Mt/yr cement industry. It will further support Schmersal’s sale partners throughout the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region.