The in-house exhibition is firmly established in GROB's event program every year as a spring trade fair. "And now that we have grown by another thirty percent and have 64 partners here, we are almost a small EMO or AMB," says GROB Sales Director Christian Müller happily. "We also have the advantage of being able to welcome our customers to our premises and show them around the company itself. They all experienced over thirty machines and numerous innovative highlights on more than 6,000 square meters of exhibition space."
Innovative and highly productive in e-mobility
In the field of electromobility, the third-generation hairpin bending machine for the production of stators took center stage at the trade fair. It proved once again that GROB-WERKE has rightly established itself as one of the world market leaders in plant engineering for electrical systems. GROB's expertise in the field of battery cell assembly, battery module assembly and "Cell-To-Pack" battery pack assembly technology was also impressive.
New G900 series and almost countless automation solutions
In machining technology, GROB presented the brand new G900 machine series for the first time, which is particularly predestined for machining extruded profiles as well as giga and mega castings. A particular eye-catcher at the in-house exhibition was the GMR (GROB Mobile Robot), which already celebrated its trade fair premiere at EMO 2023 and now fascinated visitors to the in-house exhibition for the first time during live demonstrations as a driverless transport system. However, it was only the latest representative of GROB's very diverse automation and loading solutions for both universal machines and system installations.
In-house exhibition as a meeting platform in the industry
Like all trade fairs, the GROB in-house exhibition fulfills its most important core functions as a presentation and sales exhibition. In addition, the in-house exhibition has developed over the years into an important meeting platform for different areas of the company. "We invited the decision-makers from our subsidiary plants in São Paulo, Bluffton and Dalian to Mindelheim for training sessions and meetings as part of the in-house exhibition in order to present product development in a targeted manner," says GROB-WERKE CEO German Wankmiller, explaining the strategy. "All our production managers worldwide came to Mindelheim for the Machining Days so that we could show them how the new machines are produced. We had all the assembly managers here in Mindelheim for the Assembly Days and also connected all the design managers online at the Engineering Days to inform them about how the new e-mobility machines are designed." In this way, the in-house exhibition is used directly and indirectly to show managers worldwide how the GROB Group is developing, which implementation topics the new machine technologies contain and how they are to be realized technically by means of targeted information events.
Growing importance of the GROB plant network
Against the backdrop of global political issues and their ongoing economic and cultural impact, the GROB plant network has become increasingly important. "We can only manage to survive in these challenging times as a Group," explains Wankmiller. "One example is our plant in China, which had the best capacity utilization in the first ten years of its existence and has now fallen behind." And this common sense does not only apply to the plants. GROB Mindelheim needs support in design capacity from the GROB Group due to the many new developments. That is why we have design engineers from São Paulo and also Indian engineers who provide support in Mindelheim in the area of software. "The shortage of skilled workers extends to the engineering professions. And that's exactly what we need in the GROB Group," says Wankmiller. "It is important, although exhausting, to arrange these challenges for the Group. Whether Chinese or American, everyone has their own characteristics and strategy, but this arrangement is enormously valuable for the GROB Group."
Christian Grob, Chairman of the Supervisory Board:
Our trade fair this year went really well and we were able to achieve almost all of our trade fair goals. It was also pleasing that we were not only able to arouse the interest of our customers with our in-house exhibition, but that we were also able to show our responsible employees in the plants and subsidiaries our current technology developments with our exhibition platform.
German Wankmiller, CEO GROB-WERKE:
Our in-house exhibition has an enormous impact, both internally and externally for our customers. Due to the many innovations and the speed of development in our Group, it is extremely important to communicate this innovative strength to a large number of stakeholders in the shortest possible time. And this year in particular, we have succeeded in doing just that.
Dietmar Hagspiel, Sales Manager at Alfleth Engineering GmbH:
It never ceases to amaze me from year to year what GROB-WERKE, as a family business, is able to achieve. Whether it's universal machines with automation solutions or the transformation to e-mobility! I know of no other company that combines so much expertise and flexibility at such a high speed! It's simply admirable.
Albert Schmid, Gühring KG:
GROB plays in the premier league and we have been playing in it for 25 years. If I remember correctly, we were at one of GROB's first in-house exhibitions, back then in Hall 8. And it's always an enormous incentive for us: where the most modern machines are, our company with its rotating precision tools for metal cutting must also be there.
