This article was published in July/August 2010 issue of World Port Development. To receive a pdf of the article in its original format including charts and pictures please send an email to archive@worldportdevelopment.com
World Port Development talks to Thomas H Hagen, Chief Operating Officer Demag Cranes AG
1. What was the career path you followed to reach your current position?
After graduating in Business Administration I started my career with Daimler-Benz AG. After that, I held various management positions with such multinational enterprises as ABB and Lahmayer. Finally I was CEO and President of the Weidmüller Group with responsibility for that company’s successful restructuring before I was appointed, with effect from 1 May 2007, to the Demag Cranes AG Management Board. Here, I am COO with responsibility for all operative business and for the Industrial Cranes and Port Technology segments.
2. Why do you believe you were chosen for this role?
That’s a question that should really be addressed to our Supervisory Board which is responsible for such appointments. My personal opinion is that there were two main reasons: on the one hand, there is the international experience I have gathered during the various positions I have held in numerous foreign countries. And, on the other hand, I have collected considerable experience over the years in leadership and the restructuring of enterprises. During my last post as sole member of the Management Board at Weidmüller, I was in a position to draw together all these threads and apply them to reorganising the entire business. I can now use these skills in my role as COO of Demag Cranes AG in many ways, including, of course, the current restructuring and integration process.
3. What is your greatest motivating force?
The idea that every day we can improve a little. In such multinational enterprises as Demag Cranes AG, there are constantly new opportunities for optimising products, services and processes as a result of the continuously changing business environment and requirements. We consider ourselves to be the innovation leader in our fields. That is only possible if your enterprise has creativity and a feeling for tomorrow’s customer requirements. I try to transfer this attitude to my staff. Add to this a particular enthusiasm for excellence and a problem solving approach aimed at increasing our competitiveness. It was only recently that our crane components production facility in Wetter, Germany, achieved second place in the “Best Factory” competition. This was the result of excellent team work and made me very proud. This is just one of many examples of how motivation leads to success and success promotes motivation.
4. Of the many challenges you have faced at Demag Cranes, which one sticks in your mind?
The one which has affected us most and is still with us: coping with the impacts of the worldwide financial and economic crisis to which we had to respond by implementing a tough restructuring programme and applying the strictest cost controls to secure the long-term welfare of the company. We have achieved a lot in this field but we have not reached our targets yet. We have set ourselves the task of integrating Demag Cranes AG to include all its subsidiaries and functional areas to form a single enterprise and to manage it as such. That cannot be achieved overnight.
5. In your view what are the core strengths of your Port Technology business?
First and foremost, there are our employees, who demonstrate time and again their passion for new tasks and their commitment to finding solutions. This is one reason why we consider ourselves to be technological and innovation leaders. One might say that our employees feel themselves to be entrepreneurs within the company who identify closely with the Gottwald brand name. This attitude is accompanied by our good relations to customers, which are no doubt strengthened by our Customer Voice events that are organised to support our continuous improvement efforts. These good relations are also a forum for generating new product ideas, both for tangible products and our service products, which are, after all a key reason for our high reorder levels.
6. In such a competitive market what are the challenges facing Demag Cranes over the next few years?
All in all, the intensity of competition has increased particularly in the Mobile Harbour Crane market as a result of the financial crisis. However, the Gottwald brand, a Demag Cranes brand, has the largest number of crane installations of this type and can look back over more than fifty years of experience. We have every reason to be optimistic about the future and are expanding our product range in response to market developments. Currently, we are filling the gaps in our Generation 5 crane series to provide smaller cranes. In addition, we have often noticed that customers are not just looking for individual cranes but complete, integrated systems. In this field, we are well placed to offer terminal automation solutions incorporating our own software.
7. How do you see the market for port automation developing and what is your strategy to ensure Gottwald will be a leader in this field?
There can be no doubt that the financial crisis caused a large number of key projects to be postponed or reduced in size. But this postponement does not mean they have been cancelled. We did not just sit back and wait for things to happen, but made use of the time available to expand our capabilities as a supplier of integrated systems. I am convinced that automation in ports and terminals is inevitable in the medium to long term. Our AGV (Automated Guided Vehicle) is a tried-and-tested, highly competitive product which we have made even more productive with our Lift AGV and, with our Battery AGV, more ecologically compatible. With our ASCs (Automated Stacking Cranes) we have now managed a quantum leap in the land-side transfer of containers to road trucks by upgrading our semi-automatic solution to a fully-automated one. Due to the hit rates achieved, operational manpower can be reduced by up to 75%. The basis for all this is, understandably, our sophisticated software which, like the hardware, is all provided from a single source. With innovations like these, we will maintain our pole position in automation technology.
8. What do you consider the most important technical initiatives/ projects undertaken in the Port Technology segment?
There are many. Take environmentally aware technologies, for example. Things are happening here that will change the shape of the market in the future. And this is why we are investing tremendous time and effort in designing future-orientated, environmentally compatible technologies in line with the need for sustainability. Key components in the market of the future will be battery-powered drive trains and hybrid drives. In this context, I am pleased to see our technological partnership with our customer HHLA continuing to develop, for whom we have developed the first Battery AGV, which has now successfully completed the test phase. I am also enthusiastic about the significant fuel savings that can be achieved with the world’s first hybrid drive for Mobile Harbour Cranes which has just completed successful trials in Antwerp under tough terminal conditions. An essential objective for the AGVs is to open up additional fields of application in industry and logistics hubs. The Battery AGV is well suited to these applications because its emissions-free drive technology means it has tremendous potential in production and storage buildings. It would be possible, for example, to combine AGVs and indoor cranes, which are also made within the Demag Cranes Group, so that would activate certain synergies.
We aim to develop innovative new products and refine our existing technologies further to help to interlink ships, rail and road trucks more intensively and more efficiently, which, again, will have a positive impact on the environment. Our object
ive is to increase the performance of these systems and make them more productive. Our experience in port terminals gives us strength in the knowledge that our skills and know-how are not restricted to the quayside but can be applied very successfully to the hinterland.