There aren’t many gaps left

In January 2014, Peter Schmidt was appointed new head of the division Palletising and Packaging ­Technology at the Beumer Group in Beckum/Germany. In this position he controls and coordinates the global Center of Competence in this business and is responsible for the worldwide distribution of the broad product portfolio as well as the strategic development of international markets. After his degrees in Food Technology and Biotechnology as well as Industrial Marketing and Technical Sales, Schmidt worked eighteen years for a major beverage company in the technical management before joining Beumer in 2010 as a Regional Sales ­Manager for Southern Germany. For ZKG he looks on the challenges of the future market and the chances in the packaging business.

ZKG: Mr. Schmidt, at the beginning of this year, you were named Head of the Palletising and Packaging Technology Department at Beumer Group in Beckum. You are responsible for managing and coordinating the global Center of Competence in this field. What are your tasks and goals?

Schmidt: We want to consolidate the know-how of all Beumer Group offices to offer optimal support to our customers worldwide as single-source provider for filling, palletising and packaging technologies. This is why we set up different Centers of Competence (CoC). They represent globally active research and development interfaces and manage our worldwide sales, together with group companies and sales agencies. This requires smooth communication with each other. Only then can we efficiently exploit the resulting synergies.

It is our task to provide the global sales organisation with the necessary methods, instruments and current know-how to keep all colleagues up to date. We use various communication platforms where we offer for example interactive trainings, tailor-made for the respective requirements. It allows us to pass on information quickly, efficiently and at low cost. However, these methods will not replace the personal contact entirely. The central goals of the Centers of Competence are efficient as well as customer-oriented sales activities. Here as well, we want to focus on personal contact.

ZKG: Will the communication with the group companies work only in one way?

Schmidt: No, that wouldn’t work either. We are constantly exchanging ideas. Only our local colleagues are familiar with the respective market and customer demands. They can pinpoint the relevant potentials and priority areas. Our local staff within the group companies is familiar with the country-specific customs and knows the language there. That is what characterises a strong global sales organisation and only the feedback from our colleagues on site allows us to further develop our systems and plants and to contribute to shaping markets. This also makes the CoC an important interface with product development.

ZKG: Are you planning on expanding your markets on the map and, if so, where are the remaining gaps on the Beumer globe to be filled?

Schmidt: There aren’t many gaps left, that is true. The Beumer Group is represented with 28 group and associated companies on all continents as well as sales agencies in more than 70 countries worldwide. This does not mean, however, that we have completely penetrated all markets. There is still a lot of work to be done.

ZKG: Can Beumer adapt to the different requirements of different industries?

Schmidt: We are originally coming from the cement and building materials industry, where we have established ourselves as market leader. In the meantime, we were able to transfer our know-how gained over many years to various other industries. This includes, for example, the chemical, pharmaceutical, food, automotive, mining, rock and associated products industries. We always endeavour to access new markets where our solutions meet the customer’s demands. In general, our plants and systems are designed to be adjusted to different industrial sectors and in case they reach their limits, we will develop them further.

ZKG: Do you think that the requirements in the palletising and packaging industry have increased?

Schmidt: The international market is becoming increasingly competitive. I think this is a positive development. It helps us to keep moving and to stay innovative. We witness increasingly shorter product development cycles. Once the machines, plants and systems have been newly developed they have to be rapidly launched in the market. It’s the only way to maintain our leading position. The clients have ever increasing demands on machine availability and, therefore, on customer support. Machine malfunctions and downtime are expensive. This can be avoided beforehand with high-quality machines, but they still require maintenance and service. Our worldwide colleagues in Customer Support are expertly trained and take care to ensure a high level of system availability. We offer the complete range of services, from teleservice, rotational maintenance and inspection work to residential service, where we ensure contractually agreed availability with our own employees on site. The service concepts are always tailor-made to match our customer’s profile and demands. In order to guarantee trouble-free intralogistic processes and a value-adding material flow, our employees ensure the modernisation of the plants and systems. This helps the customer to always meet upcoming capacity and technology demands.

Another core topic is sustainability. The challenge is in linking product performance and responsibility for man and the environment, thereby establishing a new standard of quality. Questioning operational costs, energy and resource consumption, as well as working conditions is becoming increasingly important to the customer in order to be successful in the long term. This is why we developed a validation system, the Beumer Sustainability Index (BSI), which evaluates all of our products in three comprehensive categories: economics, ecology and social responsibility. If a small plant or system is classified as needing improvement, we will put it through a re-engineering process. Another trend is that customers want fewer contact persons and interfaces. They prefer entire systems and single-source providers.

ZKG: Beumer was represented at interpack 2014 for the first time as single-source provider. What are the consequences and challenges that come with this change?

Schmidt: Our customers increasingly approach us with the request to get “everything from one source”. This allows them to avoid or to minimize interfaces and, if possible, to have one contact person only. This means an addition to our product portfolio along the logistics value chain. With our own R&D centre at the headquarters in Beckum, Beumer is sending a clear signal as the innovation leader. The portfolio has also been supplemented through targeted acquisitions in the field of bagging technology. One of the results is the fillpac product family, with their weighing electronics as one of the distinctive features. They ensure that the system always achieves precise degrees of filling. Users can thus optimise their packaging lines because there is no longer any need to remove bags with an incorrect weight from the process.

A healthy mixture of acquisitions and propri­etary development allowed us to establish ourselves as single-source provider within a comparatively short period of time. This means the intelligent linking of individual machines as well as the integration of existing process control or product management systems. Due to our long-time experience in automation and control technology we are able to single-handedly realize and install even complex intralogistics tasks as one system provider. This includes warehouse management systems as well as main control systems for fork-lifts and trucks.

With all the euphoria for the systems business, the product business remains an important pillar. This is why we continue to develop all of our product lines further. For example, we have completely redeveloped our Beumer stretch hood high capacity packaging system. During the development we analysed various components and optimised them in terms of function, arrangement and ergonomics. This includes an improved menu system on the machine control, an optimised, ergonomically designed workplace for the operator and material-friendly transporting of the film in the machine thanks to an innovative film transport system.

ZKG: What characterises a good business relationship with the customer?

Schmidt: We are not only the supplier but also a partner. A cooperative partnership is based on mutual trust. You don’t get that overnight. It involves a lot of work. I would put it this way: “Do what you say and say what you do”. This is the recipe for long-term relationships – not only in the business world. And just like with good friendships, you don’t want to simply build business relationships, but also maintain them. This is only possible through personal contact. This is particularly true with the onset of the digital revolution and we offer this personal contact with our local employees who always have an eye on the market and the customer.

ZKG: Thank you for the interesting talk.