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

Many Germans are familiar with the Würth screw empire. But since the 1970s there has also been a rapidly growing electronics division that has long since operated as a separate company. The offshoot generates more than 1.3 billion euros in sales with its electronic components and employs 8,200 people. The parent company's strong focus on customers has been adopted and the aim is to fulfill as many wishes as possible. “We never focused on major customers,” says CTO Alexander Gerfer in the podcast “Alles Neu…? Aus dem Maschinenraum”. “We have always made sure that we serve the masses.” Elements from Würth Elektronik can be found in household appliances, cars and even solar converters. And the goal is to stay as close as possible to the customer from development to delivery. “We want to know how the customer is doing,” says Alexander Gerfer, who has set up a high-tech center in Munich specifically for this purpose. “Innovation means: solving the customer problem.” A particular concern is to also become active in the market for vertical farming, i.e. where plants are grown in urban areas with artificial light and therefore electronics are needed. “We want to and can go in there,” says Alexander Gerfer, who grew up on the farm himself. Alexander Gerfer talks in the podcast about the influences of company patriarch Reinhold Würth, electronics on Himalayan peaks and the lack of technically skilled young talent - 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.

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