For over 50 years, ifm electronic has been supporting its customers as a leading supplier of automation solutions. In the automotive industry, which has always been an important driving force for many global economies, a central objective of ifm electronic is to ensure the reliability and operational availability of the manufacturing equipment and to facilitate the digital evolution that the manufacturers in the industry have embarked on.
In a short interview, Mircea Andriescu, National Sales Manager of ifm electronic Romania talked about the digital transformation process of the industry, solutions that support the customers, the company’s evolution and new products in the portfolio of ifm electronic.
Automotive Tomorrow: What was the evolution of ifm electronic in Romania in terms of projects, market opportunities, sales and customer portfolio?
Mircea Andriescu: The first half of 2021 came with an increase in turnover of almost 30% compared to 2020. The business finds itself in a good place, together with our customers we are returning to a more normal times, after a year of new challenges, never encountered before. All the projects put on hold in 2020 have already been implemented this year, and the same time we managed to create a healthy project pipeline for the coming years. This year we exceeded a new benchmark of over 6.000 customers and business prospects
Automotive Tomorrow: How would you describe the momentum of the automotive industry in 2021? Does it live up to the expectations set at the beginning of the year?
Mircea Andriescu: The automotive industry represents a large part of the turnover generated by our company. Therefore, its return so fast and sustained is also reflected in our growth, exceeding our expectations set at the beginning of the year. However, we are closely following the challenges that the manufacturers have recently encountered regarding raw material supply. The most commonly used word inside the industry today is Optimization and this is what ifm electronic has always done best – optimize the day-to-day operations on the manufacturing shopfloor.
Automotive Tomorrow: In your opinion, in what stage of the digital transformation process are the companies in the automotive industry in Romania?
Mircea Andriescu: For Romania, the digital transformation inside the companies represents a great opportunity, given that the industrial park has a medium average age, as a result of the transfer of equipment made in 2010-2015.
Here, through this year’s EU digitization and resilience initiative, we can identify several points through which digital transformation can be accelerated. From my point of view, for a successful digital transformation, we must focus on 3 aspects: human resources, hardware and software.
Automotive Tomorrow: What solutions are customers interested in and what type of projects do they implement to make production more efficient?
Mircea Andriescu: We are glad to see that they use, test and plan their investments in this regard. Thus, our predictive maintenance solutions, energy consumption monitoring and quality improvement are among the most frequently discussed with our customers.
Automotive Tomorrow: What is the biggest challenge for companies in this industry when it comes to digital transformation, and what factors sometimes delay this transformation process?
Mircea Andriescu: I believe that what represents the opportunity described above is also part of the industry’s challenge to speed up the digital transformation process, namely the industrial park’s age. The level of investment required to renew the park is high. To this, we add the labour force cost in Romania, which is still very low, making it challenging to digitize or automate specific processes.
Automotive Tomorrow: What new business opportunities does the implementation of Industry 4.0 brings in the automotive industry?
Mircea Andriescu: The implementation of Industry 4.0 brings many business opportunities. Some of them are: monitoring energy consumption, safety at the workplace, prolonging the life of the manufacturing equipment, automating processes and production, developing new products, improving quality, and the list can be expanded further.
For ifm, Industry 4.0 is a digital evolution. At this time, a machine generates 20TB of data, of which the PLC processes only 5%. Intelligent systems and experts must analyze the remaining 95%. Through our systems, our aim is for people to receive the right information at the right time.
Automotive Tomorrow: What are the top 3 problems of the industry in Romania that ifm electronic, through its solutions, can help solve?
Mircea Andriescu: The automotive industry is currently undergoing a significant transformation and we are closely following its evolution. We now focus on real-time and remote maintenance, essential aspects during this period, monitoring energy consumption and the safety of people at work. Here we believe that we can contribute with our products, hardware and software, together with the turnkey projects we have been delivering to our clients for over 5 years.
Automotive Tomorrow: What new solutions has ifm launched in its portfolio in 2021?
Mircea Andriescu: 2021 came with several news, but we will specify only a few in this interview, inviting readers to discover them all on our website or by contacting us directly. The most important novelty this year is moneo, the IIoT platform for industry and production, which combines the level of operational technology with the level of information technology. moneo has a modular structure and consists of basic software and applications, for example, for status monitoring or setting IO-Link sensor parameters. This makes it possible to create a customized software package for each individual requirement. Another launch this year is in the range of Vision products, used in the Automotive industry for quality verification. Among those are the Profiler and the 2D / 3D cameras developed by our colleagues. We continue to build our portfolio of turnkey projects and solutions, along with the application packages already available. We are already recognized by our customers as a one-stop shop, as a result of the comprehensive solution portfolio we provide.
