Lieferkettenmanagement mit Markus Tischer – PacMart Lounge Vol. 17

As I said, I am a member of the board at Krones, with a background in after-sales service, and now also responsible for digitalization and product development because we believe digitalization is an important building block for the service of the future. Exactly.

Yes, almost all days are challenging for the industry. The corona pandemic, the crisis and the upheavals caused by the war in Russia definitely posed a great challenge and demanded everything from us. First, the pandemic moved markets worldwide. Due to restraint, our food business proved relatively robust and quickly recovered; the order situation improved. Then supply chain issues hit us, and we had enough components? We always like to deliver to our country, but I think there is no industry that is not affected. What moves us all is the balancing act between what we can deliver, how we keep promises, and the large order intakes and longer delivery times. The uncertainty in costs, inflation, energy costs, we have to price correctly. That is the biggest burden. But every crisis also accelerates some trends, e.g., digitalization or supply chain collaboration, and offers opportunities to accelerate things that would have taken longer.

During corona, I focused on virologists and doctors. Since time immemorial, our purchasing has been in focus, and we are in daily contact with our suppliers. In times when everything went overboard, price, reliability, and true partnership with suppliers play a big role again. Also diversification to be resilient if a supplier or market fails. Long-term and reliable partnerships are important. We think we are good and reliable partners for many of our customers, but we can only achieve that if we have equally creative partners on the supplier side. We often had to substitute or change components, and that required a collaborative partnership. The length of cooperation has definitely increased, and sometimes we had to find new suppliers. So much greater complexity and intensity in supplier relationships.

I have little time, so I quickly compare and use platforms to find what I need with all the computer add-ons. I think the own business field is becoming more important. Absolutely. Efficiency gain when transactions are handled digitally. And then you can store prices and conditions so you don't have to start from scratch. So exactly like in private, we want this efficiency in business. It's clear that business via platforms and online portals is definitely growing.

Definitely. Our customers' production lines are under increasing pressure for efficiency and reliability. Unplanned outages cause ever greater damage and are unsustainable because waste is waste. So it's important to react quickly. If you do that manually, service models with on-site drivers are extremely expensive. The services our customers expect now and in the future are therefore more feasible digitally. Either digital switches on the machine, or even better, the machine itself reports when it has a problem. In the full version, it might even order the spare part online itself. When a wear part is about to fail, it automatically lands in the shopping cart. That's the vision: customers' plants are permanently online, and we can provide ideal service or manage replacement procurement. Otherwise, we won't meet the service requirements.

Yes, the big platforms used privately have advantages in the consumer area. But business has different requirements than end consumers. They value certified providers and industry-specific offerings. There are definitely industry-specific platforms, either directly from manufacturers or from suppliers. On the German side, there will always be a market for cross-manufacturer platforms because end customers don't want to interact with too many platforms. These industry-specific platforms offer partners the opportunity to provide special services and thus offer added value that the big players cannot provide.

That's a nice idea. There are many things in the world or worldviews that need to change due to the political situation, conflicts, and bloc formation. One big concern is the restriction of world trade. Especially for us in Germany, an export model, trade and division of labor have led to prosperity for Germany, Europe, and globally. It is extremely important to stand up for an open world with as few restrictions as possible, despite all bloc formation, to keep people connected and maintain prosperity.

Yes, one must be active. We have a certain inertia, but on the other hand, we are very robust in such crises, with a strong network and solid long-term partners. The downside is that we may lag behind in innovative topics that require speed. We need to combine the reliability and long-term nature of machine building with agility. Either by building such structures in our own company or through close cooperation with partners. We don't have to do everything ourselves; we can participate in startups or cooperate. The mix makes it. The classic values of machine building, combined with these new capabilities, we need to bring into a good combination. We can't be everything at once; we need good partners.

Yes, definitely. The worldviews have changed very strongly, and that requires strategy adjustments. Resilience is the big magic word: how can we remain resilient in these volatile markets? We have built our own structures in supply chains to stay stable with world politics. That is a big topic. Sustainability and the energy crisis are also accelerators. The trend towards sustainability was already there, but now it is being strongly accelerated, especially in Germany and Europe with the energy crisis and energy prices. We need to make our own operations more energy-efficient, but the bigger lever is what we can offer our customers to operate their plants more energy-efficiently. So as a consequence of these strong changes, we see both challenges and opportunities to make the business future-proof.

Definitely. Every crisis brings opportunity and accelerates trends. Recognize the trends and use them for your own business. Absolutely.