Endress+Hauser's Matthias Altendorf
In late October, Endress+Hauser opened its new campus outside of Houston, Texas. The facility, comprised of customer, integration and demonstration areas, is intended to highlight advancements from the Swiss-based process/laboratory instrumentation and automation supplier while serving as a hub for connecting with clients and the wider manufacturing and education community.
Throughout a day of presentations spotlighting new capabilities at the facility, Endress+Hauser reps discussed their varied plans for the new space. One such rep was CEO Matthias Altendorf, who dives a little deeper in this Q&A. Take a look…
Smart Industry: What is the benefit in being closer to customers with this new campus?
Matthias: The closeness to customers allows us better to collaborate, to engage, to learn and see. This is important to overcome daily challenges but as well to fuel future innovations. Through the interaction with customers in close cooperation, we are able to learn faster and support better. It provides short distances for faster services like repair, calibration, installation and commissioning. And don’t forget, people learn best in training through a common social experience.
Smart Industry: Explain your concept of translating needs into requirements and requirements into innovations.
Matthias: Customers have day in/day out challenges. We try to understand this and define requirements that represent a need for each. If this is well understood, we can find solutions for these challenges through innovative approaches.
Smart Industry: How is the role of the people working alongside new technology changing as our digitalization efforts mature?
Matthias: People make the difference, because they are able to use all the senses of the human being; this is needed to innovate and solve problems. Technology and digitalization make life easier—they enable many other things—but observation, reflection, and ideation are important human aspects.
Smart Industry: What does it mean to support a client over the whole value chain? What is the benefit with that approach?
Matthias: The value chain has two main dimensions. The physical one, which is related to supply chain, production and distribution. In all elements we can measure and provide insides. Therefore, this part of the supply chain is fully transparent and aligned. The second part is the engineering value chain. From sizing, selection, drawings, purchasing, installing and commissioning. Here we can help our customers to do this almost fully digitally and seamlessly.
Smart Industry: How varied are the needs for support / tools in these efforts among different industries?
Matthias: Today we try to reduce the tools needed for the whole engineering process as much as we can. For the pure installation, a screwdriver is enough, but for the engineering or service work we need computers or tablets.
Smart Industry: During the press conference you said that you had "brought some Swissness to Texas.” What does that mean?
Matthias: On our Houston campus we have state-of-the-art calibration technology that does not exist anywhere else in the USA. This calibration rig provides the same precision and craftmanship you can get from Endress+Hauser in Switzerland.
