Mechanical engineering "made in Germany" – what guaranteed top positions in the global market for decades is in danger of being left behind.
A study presented in February 2014 by the Impuls Foundation of the German Mechanical Engineering Industry association (VDMA) warns that competition from China is becoming increasingly dangerous for German mechanical engineering, not only in the lower segment of cheap machinery. In fact, China's share of global machinery revenues had already reached 30.1 percent, compared to Germany's share of only around 11 percent. Since 2009, Asia has been the largest manufacturing region in mechanical and plant engineering. Half of all machines produced worldwide are now manufactured there. This shift in focus is also taking place in other industries. In 2013, the People's Republic of China replaced the United States as the world's most important trading nation for the first time.
We are witnessing an epochal change accompanied by major disruptions. It is not, and will not remain, the only one. Technological and social change will confront us more frequently and more rapidly than before with the end of one professional era after another. What do people do when they reach the end of an era? They try to hold on to the familiar. They trust in their hopeful feeling that the next era is still far away and that what they are used to is still good and right. This applies not only to individuals, but also to all organizations, to companies, and even to entire nations. VDMA President Reinhold Festge feels this too and warns against ignoring the "urgent need for action": "German manufacturers must not allow themselves to be pushed to the top of the technology pyramid. The market there is too small. If we focus only on high-tech products, we will hit a wall."
People tend not to perceive change sufficiently and therefore underestimate it – regardless of how open they present themselves to be toward the future and innovation. Why is that? Our brains love the familiar. We are built to make friends with what we are used to and to perceive what is new from the outside as a threat. In love with the status quo, our brains assume and hope that circumstances will not change decisively. Most of all, we want to rescue the passing era into the future. As long as there are no competitors in an economic context, this is harmless. But when competing for scarce resources, such as customers and orders, holding on for too long causes one to fall behind. In doing so, we make the necessary transition to the new even worse and harder than it already is.
The here and now is more important to us than any future. Only under great pressure do we wish for nothing more than to have recognized the changes earlier and acted sooner. But as soon as the situation calms down and we have grown accustomed to the new, we fall back into our preference for the present. Yet the opposite would be right. It is precisely then that we have the great opportunity to ask and answer decisive questions: What can I do now to make the next era the way I want it to be? What do I need to learn? What do I need to forget? What can I take with me? What do I need to leave behind?
Sometimes one must bring about the crisis in life and in the company oneself, in order to irreversibly end one era and begin a new one.
Directly after surviving a crisis comes the best time to shape the next crisis, the next change oneself, and in doing so to be the sovereign manager of one's own future. In very practical terms, it is about making products and services, marketing and sales, processes and systems, and also people and their shared culture fit for the future. Above all, however, it is about each individual first making themselves future-competent and acting with future intelligence.
Whether in mechanical engineering or in any other industry, we will see more markets, professions and tasks disappear than we can imagine today. But we will also see as many new markets and jobs emerge as seems impossible to us today. The transition from one era to the next can either break us economically or fill our future with success and happiness.
Of course, it can happen that one boldly sets out into the new era, only to discover later with disappointment that one was far too early, that customers or technology were not yet ready after all. Whether this danger exists can only be assessed if we do not lower our gaze to day-to-day business, but instead direct it outward into the world and into the future.
We can and must see more of the future in our everyday lives, more of the technologies and trends that are changing our lives. Only then can we recognize the threats and opportunities within them, and understand how the new era will differ from the present one. Only then do we have a chance to survey the change, to orient ourselves, and to use the forces of change to our advantage.
I wish you a brilliant future!
Have a bright future!