Autodesk // Franken-Schotter GmbH & Co. KG

The natural stone industry has changed significantly over the last 20 years, moving from manually operated and manually controlled machines to CNC-controlled machines. The decision for robotics was made mainly for economic reasons, as robots can deliver high performance with relatively few personnel.

Communication with our customers has been greatly enhanced through digitalization. We can now do visualizations, renderings, and simulations that we previously had to do in other ways. We've been able to move into the digital world, which has also reduced travel costs and shortened project lead times before decisions are made on which materials to use.

If we create a digital mock-up, we can then generate a real mock-up where the customer can select individual stones for their project at our facility.

The stone industry is not very easy, and it's actually very important for survival and achieving reasonable results to have strong access to raw materials and to be able to process products all the way to the end.

The biggest benefit for us regarding BIM is naturally the diverse data we receive from customers — very different, like a colorful bouquet that contains various rings and sometimes doesn't. It's important for Franken-Schotter that we create a unified platform, and this helps us significantly in running structured and standardized processes through the various departments.

We can achieve this through experienced employees as well as technically affine and IT-savvy employees, which allows us to generate a very good product in the digital world.

We are able to process waste down to the very last crumb, and that's not the case at all companies.

My work itself is fun. I believe if work isn't fun, you have to find something else, because you do it for many, many years of your life.