Planning with foresight is a skill that distinguishes family businesses. At Poppe + Potthoff, Dr. Christian Potthoff-Sewing as principal shareholder and CFO initiated the succession years ago: For this purpose, high-potential executives were specifically brought on board and prepared in the company for the upcoming tasks. Now they take over the management of the Poppe + Potthoff Group in a team with another experienced top manager from industry.

The new Chairman of the Executive Board is Ron Blokzijl, an engineer and business economist. Following positions in leading companies in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria with numerous international activities, the Dutchman joined Poppe + Potthoff in 2018 with the task of further developing the group strategically with a focus on innovation and internationalization.

“I am very happy about my new task, as I am working closely with a young yet well- established management team,” explains Ron Blokzijl. “Poppe + Potthoff is in a very healthy condition. Dr. Potthoff-Sewing has carefully prepared the succession, for which I owe him my greatest respect. With this team, we are ideally positioned to seize new opportunities.”

Chief Executive Drive Technology is the business economist and industrial engineer Steffen Herter. The former management consultant and Director of Operations of a multinational mechanical engineering company was called to Poppe + Potthoff as Managing Director of the R+W Group in 2016. R+W, with production sites in Germany and Slovakia as well as numerous international sales offices, develops and produces precision and industrial drive couplings and has been part of the Poppe + Potthoff Group since 2011.

Dr.-Ing. Bengt-Henning Maas as Chief Executive Mobility leads the product segments Tubular Components (customer-specific precision steel tubes, common rails and high- pressure lines as well as specialized mechanical engineering) and Precision Compo- nents. The Doctor of Physics came to Poppe + Potthoff from steel research in 2014 and has been driving the topic of Industry 4.0, among others.

Benjamin Hud, who has been Head of Finance and Controlling at Poppe + Potthoff since 2009, is now Chief Financial Officer and in this role will also be in charge of per- sonnel development and IT for the Group. It is his responsibility to expand the syner- gies within the group with its 1,650 employees at 17 locations through joint processes and systems across all sites and to continuously develop the qualification of employ- ees and managers.

Dr. Christian Potthoff-Sewing will join Poppe + Potthoff’s advisory board. The compa- ny has been family-owned since its founding in 1928 in Werther, Westphalia. With the expertise of top executives, the business has continuously been expanded. Today, Poppe + Potthoff stands for highest precision in metal processing for the automotive industry, ship and aircraft construction, mechanical engineering and other industries and is active close to its customers in over 50 countries.

On a yearly basis, in 2018 machine tool orders remained stable versus 2017 (-0.8%)

The UCIMU index with regard to machine tool orders is stationary: in the fourth quarter of 2018, it stood at -0.2% compared with the same period of the previous year. The absolute value of the index was 161.6 (base 100 in 2010).

The overall outcome was due to the positive performance of foreign orders and to the decrease in the orders collected by the Italian manufacturers in the domestic market, which is however still dynamic.

In particular, foreign orders grew by 2.4% compared with the period October-December 2017. The absolute value of the index was 141.7.

On the domestic front, on the contrary, Italian machine tool manufacturers registered a 6.3% downturn in the collection of orders, compared with the fourth quarter of 2017. The absolute value of the index amounted to 267.4: it is the best result ever achieved (compared with the same quarter), excluding the record of the fourth quarter of 2017.

If it is clear that we are experiencing a slowdown phase, however it is important to consider the jump of Italian machine tool consumption over the last few years. Considering a representative sample of enterprises belonging to the sector (derived from the panel regarding the data collection for the index), in the fourth quarter of 2011, the average value of orders collected in the domestic market by each enterprise of the sample amounted to 1.7 million euro. In 2016, it was 2.5 million euro, whereas in 2018, it stood at 6.1 million, much more than the double compared with two years ago.

On a yearly basis, the total index is confirmed around the level of 2017 (-0.8%). Foreign orders increased by 5.2%. Domestic orders recorded an 11.5% decrease.

Massimo Carboniero, President of UCIMU-SISTEMI PER PRODURRE, the Italian machine tools, robots and automation systems manufacturers’ association, commented: “The data of the fourth quarter 2018 are confirming the feeling and the expectations we already had: the year that has just ended was really positive for the Italian manufacturers, who achieved good results both in Italy and abroad”.

“With a view to the future, the positive trend of orders in the foreign markets is an encouraging indication for Italian manufacturers that have proven to be able to work well despite the rather difficult international framework. The slowdown of the automotive sector and the partial closing of some markets involved in complicated, geopolitical issues – as, for example, in the case of Russia and Iran – did not negatively interfere with the activity in foreign markets, which grew uninterruptedly for the whole year 2018”.

“Also in consideration of the expected slowdown of the domestic market, – stated Carboniero – which should however be confirmed in 2019 on similar levels as in 2018, it is necessary to establish measures that may encourage and stimulate the enterprises to work more and more with foreign users”.

Xiris Automation Inc is pleased to announce the release of an expanded version of WeldStudio™, its

software utility for controlling and displaying images from weld cameras. The latest version of WeldStudio™ includes the Picture-In-a-Picture (PIP) feature, a powerful new feature that allows for an inset window to be created in the camera image with different settings from the main camera image.

When implemented, key areas of interest within the inset window can be set up with different contrast levels than the rest of the image, optimizing the inset window for a bright weld arc while its surrounding background can be enhanced to see the darker surrounding features.

The Xiris WeldStudio™ software includes everything needed to set up, control, display and record video from Xiris XVC weld cameras. The user-friendly interface allows operators to set-up and control multiple cameras on any suitable PC running Windows 7/8/10 operating system.

Xiris Automation Inc. specializes in developing Optical Systems for Quality Control for several niche industries, providing some of the world’s most dynamic manufacturers with the ability to detect, recognize, and interpret quality defects in their manufactured goods.

In the fourth quarter of 2018, order bookings at the German machine tool industry fell by 13 per cent compared to the preceding year’s equivalent period. Domestic orders slumped by 28 per cent. Orders from abroad were down by four per cent. For 2018, the overall rise was one per cent. Domestic orders were up by five per cent, while export orders finished at the preceding year’s level.

“The decrease in orders during the year’s fourth quarter is attributable primarily to the baseline effect,” comments Dr. Wilfried Schäfer, Executive Director of the sectoral organisation VDW (German Machine Tool Builders’ Association) in Frankfurt am Main, in assessing the result. “The preceding year’s equivalent period showed an exceptionally steep rise, particularly in Germany itself. It was hardly to be expected that it would be topped again,” he goes on to explain. Nonetheless, the worldwide turbulences of trade conflicts and market foreclosures, from the prospect of a presumptively chaotic Brexit to the dismantling of numerous arms control agreements, are now also being reflected in uncertainty among investors. In the third quarter of 2018, there were already signs that orders were beginning to slacken.

At the end of the year, it was only the euro states that had currently proved able to achieve substantial growth, while all other groupings, domestic, total exports, and non-euro nations, showed double-figure decreases.

“The downturn in orders indicates that the situation will ease in the months ahead,” says Dr. Schäfer of the VDW. “At present, full capacity utilisation, a shortage of skilled workers, and bottlenecks in material deliveries are putting a brake on production, and leading to longer delivery times,” explains Dr. Schäfer in conclusion.

Overall, 2018 ended for the machine tool manufacturers with a new record in terms of production output, which rose by seven per cent to reach more than 17 billion euros.

Background

The German machine tool industry ranks among the five largest specialist groupings in the mechanical engineering sector. It provides production technology for metalworking applications in all branches of industry, and makes a crucial contribution towards innovation and enhanced productivity in the industrial sector as a whole. Due to its absolutely key role for industrial production, its development is an important indicator for the economic dynamism of the industrial sector as such. In 2018, with around 73,000 employees (annual average in 2018, companies with more than 50 employees), the sector produced machines and services worth around 17 billion euros.