Future-proof and sustainable

Mr. Hopp, what is your advice to entrepreneurs in the manufacturing industry in the current crisis situation?

Dietmar Hopp: Use the time of upheaval and changing revenue sources to question business models and reinvent yourself in parts. Ensuring higher productivity and competitiveness is an ongoing task in the manufacturing industry and currently more important than ever - for companies, for jobs, for our economy.

What should companies do?

Hup: Today, higher productivity can no longer be achieved without a strong, flexible and scalable IT infrastructure. In the course of digitalization, the platform economy has become established in the consumer sector.

It will also do so in the industrial sector. I agree with the now common saying in the IT industry: In the era of Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things - the IIoT - every company is becoming a software company.

In other words, the right technology platform today determines the future viability of companies. This requires a comprehensive digital transformation that takes into account both the technological and the corporate cultural level.

What does this mean in the current Covid 19 crisis?

Hup: The economic impact of the pandemic cannot yet be predicted worldwide. For companies, however, one thing is clear: If sales are slumping and fixed costs remain high at the same time, it is now a matter of focusing on post-crisis competitiveness in addition to all the necessary measures for the health of the workforce and business partners.

How can manufacturing companies regain stability and competitiveness? This requires stringent cost management and new intelligent IT solutions. A modern technology platform for production can make a significant contribution to a healthy cost structure.

You are the majority shareholder of Forcam - your main reason?

Hup: For me, the concept of the open IT platform for production is a critical success factor in the age of Industry 4.0. As you know, as one of the founders of SAP, I was able to play a key role in shaping the age of Industry 3.0 with SAP.

Many customers have trusted SAP's concept and have been very successful with it. Now, in the age of Industry 4.0, the countless amounts of data need to be structured and put into a meaningful context in order to make the right decisions at the right time in the production process.

Why is the Forcam solution particularly suitable for this?

Hup: For two reasons. First, for top management in the manufacturing industry, it is a matter of reorganizing the company in terms of IT and thus opening it up to the ever new possibilities of the digital age. This is the only way they can maintain their competitiveness.

Secondly, it is about providing production staff with all the necessary and correct digital decision-making tools. Forcam has developed one of the most modern and flexible platform solutions on the market for these two requirements.

You have recently increased your stake in Forcam ...

Hup: I have been a strategic investor in Forcam since 2004. Since then, I have been actively following the company's journey and its offering - from a web-based MES system that was innovative at the time to today's open and cloud-enabled IIoT platform solution for production called Forcam Force.

In mid-2019, I decided to take a majority stake in Forcam. I want to give customers and prospective customers the signal that they are investing in a sustainable partnership with Forcam.

Thank you for the interview