Dream team: Man & machine & product

Helmut Schmidt once said, “If you have a vision, you should go to the doctor.” What is the significance of having a vision in your company?

A company’s vision describes an ideal state in the future that the company wants to achieve. With a good corporate vision, I think you can unleash unprecedented forces, because it allows you to paint a big picture of the company’s future. The vision describes the path ahead. It should inspire people and create a common understanding. It is essential to give employees direction and meaning and create a vision that expresses the change we want to achieve with our organization.

Your company specializes in drives. But what drives you?

We are going to have to accept that we will have to work the way in which technology develops: in a networked manner. We are moving from a hierarchical organization to a network organization, in which each employee has to make a result-oriented contribution. Lean enterprise, Digitization and Industry 4.0 are the design approaches that have enabled companies in the 21st century to remain competitive through agility and adaptability and become trendsetters in the market. My credo is: Maintain what has proven to be successful, develop new things and create added value for customers. Creativity prevents me from coming to a stop and is what drives me!

In the classic movie Terminator, a world is imagined in which intelligent machines have taken power and want to destroy humanity. Is this absurd science fiction or someday a conceivable reality?

My credo is that the technology is subject to humans. A human operator manages the processes and intelligent systems, just like assembly assistants support him or her in providing these services. People must be willing to intelligently work with these assistants in production, then a robot integrated into the production process will no longer be seen as a threat but rather an aid in achieving excellent performance and thereby increasing the company’s competitiveness. The magic phrase is human-technology cooperation!

In the 1990s you went to Japan in order to take part in training for your company. Have we now reached a point at which foreign countries will come to Germany to visit Lean Smart Factories?

Lean production, Kanban or Kaizen as continuous improvement processes: These new industry management concepts were recently provided by the Japanese market.

Today, we can demonstrate in Germany that a great deal of competitiveness can be gained if we integrate the value chain in an intelligent manner. Recently, 36 managers from Japan visited our plant in Graben-Neudorf to see our factory live. In the great lean wave of the 1990s, we all pilgrimaged together to Japan, now it is the other way around. That’s great, isn’t it?

​​Have you had any particular aha-experience in your professional life that impacted you?

In 2007, as Managing Director of Technology, I also took on the task of managing the Research and Development department for production.
After implementing a new R&D structure, organization and the related results-oriented tasks, work on developing innovations was increased and sustainable new SEW innovations were created. The principles of the SEW system of value creation from production also demonstrated their effectiveness when applied in the technical field. This inspired and motivated me to move towards product development organization that is performance-oriented.

What inspires you in your work?

Success only comes to those who succeed in motivating employees to achieve common goals in order to move their organization forward in a targeted manner. I try to inspire and motivate others by personally exemplifying motivation and the highest level of performance and only demand of others what I myself am willing to do. I recognize ideas and creativity independent of hierarchies and strive for continuous improvement.

People who drive business innovation need two things: Passion for their work and project as well as expertise in planning, controlling and implementing defined activities.

A congress participant came up to me after my talk and said: Mr. Soder, you are now 64 years old and not even a bit tired. Your enthusiasm and passion for your company and innovation is unparalleled. You are a creative force who keeps coming up with new things and has been for several decades. Such statements motivate me and drive me every day.

You come to your Smart Factory and your machines tell you that they want to establish a trade union and demand breaks to play chess. How do you react?

That is not going to happen in my factories, because technology is subject to humans, and it is not going to run our lives. We will always need people to train and fine-tune AI-based assistance systems. People and machines are not competitors, but instead partners in the Smart Factory of the future!

Processes in Smart Factories are nearing perfection. And now more people expect this perfection from themselves. What do you think of this interest in personal optimization?

Success makes you happy! With structured self-optimization, we can gradually achieve our goals and create success that motivates and activates us in a lasting manner. Self-optimization at work is important to meet the demands of work, to grow into the tasks and become really good at what you do. We adapt our working methods to the challenges, learn more, improve our processes and achieve better results with growing experience.

Are there any considerations on how the intelligent interaction of humans and machines can be used not only in factories but also in other areas such as logistics, care and education?

My thought is that the focus will not be on replacing people with intelligent machines, but rather creating the optimal cooperation between man and machine. Artificial intelligence will be increasingly able to imitate human thinking in the coming years.

Human-technology cooperation can then be applied in a wide variety of fields – from regulatory work, administration and production to finance, insurance and commerce, as well as applications in mobility, health and care.

What was the most important invention of the last 100 years for you?

Using computer technology in the context of a machine tool! Starting around 1960, the first numerical controls for machine tools were developed and built. The emergence of the “NC” (numerical control) was one of the prerequisites for the rapid reconstruction of the world economy after World War II. Thanks to NC machines, requirements for e.g. automobiles, aircraft, consumer goods, etc. could be met that also fulfilled quality demands. Starting in the mid-seventies of the 20th century, NC became CNC, i.e. computerized numerical control technology. This new control technology led to large increases in industrial productivity in the area of machining, forming and automation of machines and plants.