Advancing digitalisation, a high degree of product innovation, fast delivery times worldwide and a sustainable circular economy - these are just some of the future projects that igus intends to drive forward this year. The company is now expanding its management team to fulfil this wide range of tasks.
The new managing directors Gerhard Baus, New Businesses, Michael Blass, e-chain systems, Tobias Vogel, Plain bearings & linear technology, and Artur Peplinski, igus International, now complement the company management around the company founder Frank Blase.
„I am delighted to be working with this team. Together we have 148 years of igus experience.“ Frank Blase
Each of the new managing directors is responsible for one product area worldwide; one expands the companies on site. „This is unusual and at the same time corresponds to our ‘solar system organisation“, where the customer is at the centre as a source of energy," says Frank Blase. At the same time, he appointed three new authorised signatories for the Cable, Assembly and Linear Technology & Low Cost Automation product areas. There are also five new authorised signatories for Production, Purchasing and Human Resources; they complement the colleagues for IT and Finance.
„Together with our igus colleagues, we have already realised many new investments this year.“ These include further automation of the factory, robolink low-cost robots, for example, which Creation of new test capacities such as the clean room laboratory and gearbox test stands as well as the Increase in production capacity to more than 560 injection moulding machines and 18 newly installed machines for state-of-the-art toolmaking.
igus invests in recycling start-up
At the same time, further investments were made in logistics and information systems for short delivery times. In all of this, the topic of sustainability is becoming increasingly important, emphasises Frank Blase, who joined the start-up last year. Mura Technologies invested in the company to support the construction of the first commercial plant to recycle plastic into crude oil. can be realised. „In the extended management team, we all agree that we will incorporate the ideas of the circular economy even more strongly into our core business.“
„We want to continue making crucial investments in the future so that customers can access their motion plastics innovations quickly, easily and reliably,“ promised Frank Blase at the igus annual press conference 2020 in May. The igus CEO and entrepreneur believes that the company is on the right track so far. Take digitalisation, for example: „Our 400 square metre real trade fair stand in Cologne has been online since the beginning of May. In the meantime over 55,000 interested visitors from all over the world visited the stand virtually and igus customer advisors held 8,700 digital discussions there.“ At the centre of the exhibition are over 120 new products that enable customers to save costs and improve their technology. These include autumn innovations such as the 3D-printed smart plain bearing, with which the triboplastics specialist Industry 4.0 for the first time with 3D printing in just one production step united.
Source: igus
