Podcast „Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“

When you talk about the KRONE Group, you are actually talking about two companies. On the one hand, there is the agricultural machinery sector, in which the company from Emsland in Lower Saxony has been active for over 100 years. At the same time, however, KRONE now also builds semi-trailers and trailers for commercial vehicles, giving it another foothold in a different sector. "The mentality in the two areas is already very different," says Bernard Krone, chairman of the group company's supervisory board in the podcast "Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum". The trick, he says, is to constantly drive change in both worlds. Since its founding, KRONE has developed practice in thinking of its products from the user's point of view - partly because a manufacturer in agriculture has little else to do. "We also thrive on our customers' ideas," Krone says. "We have to listen to them." In development, this has led to new business models - such as the option for farmers to book additional engine power for machines via the web during special phases. In the case of commercial vehicles, on the other hand, Krone is considering whether batteries for the electric drive could in future be accommodated not only in the tractor unit, but possibly also in the semitrailer - in order to gain more space for the space-intensive electricity storage units in this way. "We used to think in terms of steel and iron," Krone says. "Today, we think more digitally." The head of the Supervisory Board tells us what he would talk about with Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir, why he founded a "Denkfabrik," and why you should definitely go to a shooting festival in Spelle. In the podcast - with Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum and Capital editor Nils Kreimeier.

How can the origin and future of Mittelstand companies be courageously united? What are the challenges facing family businesses and what experiences do they gather in digital transformation? These questions are answered by "Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum", the interview podcast for German Mittelstand*. Once a month, Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum, and Nils Kreimeier, Senior Editor of the business magazine Capital, talk to thought leaders and makers from the heart of the German economy and focus on the personalities and their motivation.
*The podcast is in German.

For more episodes of "Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum" please click here!