What opportunities does automation technology offer companies in times of the coronavirus pandemic?

This period had a lasting impact on our way of working. During the lockdown, employees whose work allowed it were all working from home. The implementation had to happen very quickly and many are still working remotely and digitally today. Of course, this is not possible for employees in production, but automation technology offers opportunities there through digitalization, for example condition monitoring, predictive maintenance and cloud-based IIoT solutions. Let me give you an example of one of our customers who uses our cloud solution to view the status of each of their machines worldwide. As a rule, the technicians can localize the faults from the control center and get the machine up and running again. In the past, they had to travel to the machine's location to do this. In corona times, this would have led to months of downtime. Our strategic partner Banner Engineering, for example, offers complete solutions with which premises can be checked for the number of people permitted. A tower light then shows green or red at the entrance. In this respect, the corona pandemic is definitely an accelerator of digitalization, both in terms of Industry 4.0 and the topic of Working Environments 4.0.

No major automation trade fairs have taken place this year, and physical customer contact is limited. What impact has this had on your business development?

We really miss the direct exchange with customers and interested parties that face-to-face events such as trade fairs make possible. Even the most innovative digital ideas cannot compensate for this. In the current situation, however, not attending such events is undoubtedly the right measure. At Turck, we started early on to offer our customers alternative ways of obtaining information and making contact, which is also being used extensively. For example, we launched the "Digital Innovation Park". At www.turck.de/dip you will find our "digital showcase", so to speak, with innovations and current topics relating to automation technology, Industry 4.0 and IIoT. The topics range from decentralized automation and condition monitoring to Ethernet in process automation. Webinars and white papers provide in-depth information on the topics and are in high demand from our customers. We have already been able to generate more leads this way than at traditional trade fairs. Nevertheless, we are looking forward to being able to talk to customers and interested parties in person again at a real trade fair stand once the crisis is over.

What trends can we expect to see over the next five years?

The megatrend of the near future is digitalization. In this corona year in particular, we are experiencing the opportunities this offers. You don't have to be a clairvoyant to predict that not only will our working world be different after the crisis, but that the digital topics of the future relating to the Industrial Internet of Things will also develop much faster than originally expected. The automation industry will definitely benefit greatly from these changes, as we are actively shaping this transformation, which means that this crisis also presents our industry with new opportunities that need to be seized.