![\"\"](\"https:\/\/doubleyuu.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/MB3.png\")
Martin Becker has been active at KNF for 32 years and became sole managing director in the year 2000, when he took over the reins from his father. He is married and has 4 children, with one of them already working in the company.<\/p><\/div>\n
Martin, in your opinion, what are the opportunities as well as the challenges mid-sized companies such as KNF face today?<\/strong><\/h3>\nWe are privileged to live in an era when technological advances are made by leaps and bounds. In the past, we had good reason to be very careful with any information we passed on to the outside or allowed to come into the company. We had and continue to have a competitive advantage thanks to our know-how. Digitalization, technology start-ups and new technologies such as 3D printing have put us under pressure and made us change our approach. We have to shorten our development times, have to understand our customers even better and have to match our customers\u00b4 experience to the expectations of engineers of the younger generations in particular.<\/p>\n
Our big challenge will be to strike the right balance in the process. How open can we be without jeopardizing our know-how advantage? Which technologies and trends are truly relevant to our customers? What types of digital cooperation will increase the efficiency of decentralized organizations such as ours?<\/p>\n
How do you define your role as CEO with respect to digital transformation?<\/strong><\/h3>\nTo date, I have yet to read a study that shows that digital transformation happens from the bottom up. Change always starts at the top. And then, as the CEO, I looked up and realized there was nobody else, so obviously any change had to start with me.<\/p>\n
I\u00b4m in my 50s, which means I have internalized many routines and approaches that have guided my daily work routine for the last 32 years. Since I started getting involved in the digital realm, my way of thinking about these things has changed.<\/p>\n
What\u00b4s most difficult is to have the necessary discipline to \u201estick with it\u201c and not to revert to old patterns. And the old way of doing things remains much more efficient for quite some time, of course, simply because you have an incredible amount of experience doing it that way. But if you give it enough time and develop new routines, you will notice just how much simpler and more efficient your work day will become.<\/p>\n
\u00a0You just spent some time in Silicon Valley<\/strong>\u2014<\/strong> what did you take away from your visit?<\/strong><\/h3>\nI do have to say, their mindset was especially impressive. We often think in small iterations. How do we increase the efficiency of our engines by 3 % or how can we speed up a process by 10%? In Silicon Valley expectations are quite different. At Google, for example, they are talking about the factor 10, not about 10%. That is the mindset I would like to take root in our heads as well. Of course we still need incremental innovations going forward. We will continue to optimize our products and develop new variations. But we also have to think about tomorrow and the day after. How can we as an industrial business become five to ten times better than today? Can we manage on our own or do we need a lot more interaction, cooperation and joint development efforts internally as well as with our suppliers and customers? \u201eOpen up and think bigger\u201c was a big revelation in my books.<\/p>\n
Obviously this doesn\u00b4t happen from one day to the next. We have to support our employees and allow for set-backs as well. We have to have the courage to let a project fail early on and to promptly analyze such failure, in order to learn from our mistakes much more quickly.<\/p>\n
You could say that Silicon Valley and a mid-sized machine manufacturer don\u00b4t have much in common. What\u00b4s your opinion on that?<\/strong><\/h3>\nAt first glance that\u00b4s correct. Many companies located there build their business based on software solutions, which means they don\u00b4t offer any tangible products. But it\u00b4s really not my intention to turn KNF into a software company anyway. Much rather, I focus on what makes these companies successful and why their products can be found worldwide. Their approach can then in turn be applied to a mid-sized company like ours as well. In my opinion, there are essentially two main components driving their success: First, it is their extreme customer focus. Take Google\u00b4s approach for example: \u201cIt is never the customer\u00b4s fault. The problem lies with us or rather our products.\u201c We have to find solutions that will make every individual in our target group happy with our products. And the second factor is directly based on the first. We have to start thinking in Use Cases. As a company that historically focused on engineering and products, we have invested heavily in research and development in the past, just to find out in some cases that our solution might not address the customers\u00b4 main problem. It is much more efficient to describe a use case and develop a solution accordingly, especially when dealing with short iterations and fast prototypes.<\/p>\n
To date, I have yet to read a study that shows that digital transformation happens from the bottom up. Change always starts at the top. And then, as the CEO, I looked up and realized there was nobody else, so obviously any change had to start with me.<\/p>\n
I\u00b4m in my 50s, which means I have internalized many routines and approaches that have guided my daily work routine for the last 32 years. Since I started getting involved in the digital realm, my way of thinking about these things has changed.<\/p>\n
What\u00b4s most difficult is to have the necessary discipline to \u201estick with it\u201c and not to revert to old patterns. And the old way of doing things remains much more efficient for quite some time, of course, simply because you have an incredible amount of experience doing it that way. But if you give it enough time and develop new routines, you will notice just how much simpler and more efficient your work day will become.<\/p>\n
\u00a0You just spent some time in Silicon Valley<\/strong>\u2014<\/strong> what did you take away from your visit?<\/strong><\/h3>\nI do have to say, their mindset was especially impressive. We often think in small iterations. How do we increase the efficiency of our engines by 3 % or how can we speed up a process by 10%? In Silicon Valley expectations are quite different. At Google, for example, they are talking about the factor 10, not about 10%. That is the mindset I would like to take root in our heads as well. Of course we still need incremental innovations going forward. We will continue to optimize our products and develop new variations. But we also have to think about tomorrow and the day after. How can we as an industrial business become five to ten times better than today? Can we manage on our own or do we need a lot more interaction, cooperation and joint development efforts internally as well as with our suppliers and customers? \u201eOpen up and think bigger\u201c was a big revelation in my books.<\/p>\n
Obviously this doesn\u00b4t happen from one day to the next. We have to support our employees and allow for set-backs as well. We have to have the courage to let a project fail early on and to promptly analyze such failure, in order to learn from our mistakes much more quickly.<\/p>\n
You could say that Silicon Valley and a mid-sized machine manufacturer don\u00b4t have much in common. What\u00b4s your opinion on that?<\/strong><\/h3>\nAt first glance that\u00b4s correct. Many companies located there build their business based on software solutions, which means they don\u00b4t offer any tangible products. But it\u00b4s really not my intention to turn KNF into a software company anyway. Much rather, I focus on what makes these companies successful and why their products can be found worldwide. Their approach can then in turn be applied to a mid-sized company like ours as well. In my opinion, there are essentially two main components driving their success: First, it is their extreme customer focus. Take Google\u00b4s approach for example: \u201cIt is never the customer\u00b4s fault. The problem lies with us or rather our products.\u201c We have to find solutions that will make every individual in our target group happy with our products. And the second factor is directly based on the first. We have to start thinking in Use Cases. As a company that historically focused on engineering and products, we have invested heavily in research and development in the past, just to find out in some cases that our solution might not address the customers\u00b4 main problem. It is much more efficient to describe a use case and develop a solution accordingly, especially when dealing with short iterations and fast prototypes.<\/p>\n
At first glance that\u00b4s correct. Many companies located there build their business based on software solutions, which means they don\u00b4t offer any tangible products. But it\u00b4s really not my intention to turn KNF into a software company anyway. Much rather, I focus on what makes these companies successful and why their products can be found worldwide. Their approach can then in turn be applied to a mid-sized company like ours as well. In my opinion, there are essentially two main components driving their success: First, it is their extreme customer focus. Take Google\u00b4s approach for example: \u201cIt is never the customer\u00b4s fault. The problem lies with us or rather our products.\u201c We have to find solutions that will make every individual in our target group happy with our products. And the second factor is directly based on the first. We have to start thinking in Use Cases. As a company that historically focused on engineering and products, we have invested heavily in research and development in the past, just to find out in some cases that our solution might not address the customers\u00b4 main problem. It is much more efficient to describe a use case and develop a solution accordingly, especially when dealing with short iterations and fast prototypes.<\/p>\n