We had the opportunity to sit in on the State of the Industry: Executive Outlook session with industry-leading executives from TRUMPF, Lincoln Electric, Schuler and DuPont Powder Coatings America. Moderated by Dr. Chris Kuehl, Economic Analyst for FMA, John Stropki (Chairman, President & CEO of Lincoln Electric), David Lazzeri (President of Dupont), Rolf Biekert (President & CEO of TRUMPF), and Tim McCaughey (President & CEO of Schuler) discussed their views about the current state of the industry and the trends they believe will shape the future.
In addition to taking questions from the audience, the panelists shared their insights on adapting work force issues, what’s changing in their business, future technologies, and more.
Chris Kiel: As we all are aware this has been a rough two or three years of economic recovery with the recession, and I guess the good news is that we’re not going into a double dip because we never really got out of the first dip. So as we struggle to determine what’s going to happen in the months and years to come we decided to ask a group of people with a particular understanding of the industry and the direction of the industry as a whole.
Where is the growth? Where can we expect to see expansion? Is there opportunity within a certain industry sector or in certain parts of the world? Where do we go from here?
John Stropki (LE): I think you can categorize the growth in two different ways. One would be geographical growth; we’re seeing a significant amount of growth, on a manufacturing basis, in the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) countries and I think that’s driven by two factors: the huge bloom of people from rural areas moving into the cities and the great demand that creates for infrastructure, and then on the energy side. We track what is happening around the world and the predictions for energy demand are that it will nearly double over the course of the next 20-25 years. That creates a tremendous opportunity for all forms of manufacturing and that’s obviously something that we’re particularly interested in because all forms of energy require a tremendous amount of manufacturing and welding.
David Lazzeri (Dupont): Likewise at the Dupont company, we view the emerging regions as really fertile ground for global growth; at the same time we’re supporting and growing in our developing regions. When you look at the segments, health and nutrition are important to Dupont, alternative energy and communications is certainly a growth area and then some of the more traditional things like mining, oil and gas exploration and distribution are still very, very important to Dupont. And then last but not least, safety, security, and protection are three key areas that are critical for Dupont growth
Rolf Biekert (TRUMPF): I think for TRUMPF, we are really seeing growth opportunities in the North American market and in agricultural equipment, energy related equipment and medical equipment of course. We also see an increase in demand for consumer products fabricated with our equipment in lower quantities with higher variations, which requires flexibility. This is required more nowadays, and of course the BRIC countries are a growing market of opportunities. However, as we are a German owned subsidiary in the U.S. we have not had too much opportunity to go offshore in targeting these markets. But we’ve developed a nice machine in the last few years which we can sell very, very well to some of these countries, so we are really competing from North America because the products are exclusively built in the U.S. at this point.
Tim McCaughey (Schuler): I’ll have to say the dirty word automotive because we actually still see a lot of growth in automotive around the world, particularly in the BRIC nations, there’s no question about it. There have been quite a few investments made for our type of metal forming equipment there and we’re quite happy to be there. We do realize that we have to temper that potential with diversification, particularly in agriculture and in oil and gas exploration pertaining to large pipe fabricating and manufacturing. We see a lot of potential there.
