Dr. Fabian Westbrink

 That sounds like a lot of work. How do you manage it all? 

In fact, all this only works with the active support of our department- and team-leaders. The many years of experience and thus the expertise of our employees is also an important key factor. I am very grateful for the seamless cooperation, which makes my professional tasks much easier.

What are you working on at the moment? 

The question is more like: What we are currently not working on? Apart from standardization and new innovations, we are improving the cooperation between individual departments, driven by process optimizations, new technologies and the involvement of employees. The constant training of employees is also a major priority for us. The world seems to be turning faster and faster, constant updates, new systems and more agile working methods are largely changing the corporate world. This is where we are challenged to regularly update our employees to the latest state of the art. Another important aspect, also for me personally, is our commitment to the promotion of young talents by actively accompanying bachelor's and master's theses and promoting new talents.

 Are there any new developments that you are driving forward? 

Standing still always means decline, which is why we dedicate ourselves to permanently relevant topics and stand for our high level of innovation, both within the company and in the development of new technologies, machines and new target markets. However, especially as a company with more than a century of tradition, we must always ask ourselves where our products, that have been known and valued in the market for a long time, still meet the needs of our customers. As the market leader, which development can we bring forward to set new trends? In addition, we are currently working at full speed on the standardization of our machines to be able to offer tailor-made and cost-effective solutions.

 JOEST has been successfully operating in a wide variety of industries for many years. Automation technology, control, Industry 4.0 – all of this is becoming immensely important. What is JOEST doing to stay on top of this?  

That's where you find the core of my job and my vision for the JOEST group. Under the holistic curtain of Industry 4.0, we are evaluating current processes from engineering and production to optimize cooperation with the help of current technologies. On the other hand, we offer our customers considerable added value with tailor-made solutions from the field of automation technology. Since we are also increasingly acting as a system supplier and aggregating complex systems from machines across our entire product portfolio, intelligent networking of the individual system components is essential.

If we look a little bit into the future, predictive maintenance with the help of continuous condition monitoring will be the predominant topic for our customers. This is where we benefit greatly from our many years of experience in design and service, which allow us to reliably assess the condition of our machines. Now, we must combine this experience with our automation experts to create an intelligent product and make it accessible to our customers. Of course, the topic of artificial intelligence will also play a major role here.

 And where will the journey take us in the next few years?

The current challenges, such as supply chain disruptions, especially of electrical components, must be continuously addressed. The ongoing shortage of skilled workers in all areas also requires increased attention. Energy and sustainability have been in focus for some time but are becoming increasingly important due to changing global economic contexts and crises. In the future, we will always be able to offer our customers energy-saving systems and energy management systems. Incidentally, the new Energy Efficiency Act for energy-intensive industry means that the latter are not only an optional extra but will soon be mandatory.