Insight

A review and preview of the global fastener market

Named after the Roman god who is often depicted as having two faces – due to its ability to look to the future and to the past – the Janus Perspective is a unique feature that includes a wide cross section of global fastener business leaders, who have all contributed their retrospective of 2019 and thoughts on prospects and challenges for 2020.

 Rainer Bürkert, general manager

For the majority of our manufacturing industrial customers, the business year 2019 was characterised by uncertainties in the global economy and an unclear situation with regard to trade and tariff conflicts, but also in the automotive and supplier industries.

Despite difficult market conditions and the resulting investment backlog in various industrial customer segments, Würth Industrie Service Germany recorded a positive growth rate of 3.5% in 2019. This positive development is also evident in the industrial companies in Central Europe with a sales growth of 3% to 5% compared to the previous year.

One reason for this, and an essential element of the corporate strategy of Würth Industrie Service, is the direct supply of all customers in Europe through a central logistics concept – a clear commitment to Europe. Through this strategy, customers can achieve the greatest possible supplier consolidation and reduce the flow of goods by bundling C-parts from one single source, as well as avoiding freight intensive small consignments.

In total, customers at more than 20,000 locations, in more than 25 countries, receive their production materials and operational equipment directly to the point of use with maximum supply security. This makes it possible to implement a Europe-wide unique quality level of services, sustainable investments in process technology, as well as long-term logistics concepts and the qualification of specialists.

From 2018 to 2020, a total of €160 million will be invested in the Würth Industrial Park, buildings such as high rack warehouses, OSR shuttle warehouses, and technologies such as open shuttles as autonomous transport systems, as well as picking and palletising robots. An increase in storage capacity to more than 1,000,000 storage locations is expected by the end of 2020. In addition to logistics, other functions such as purchasing are managed centrally and a comprehensive, uniform IT landscape, as well as uniform C-parts systems, and a uniform service level for customers, have been created. In 2020, the focus will also continue to be on personal customer support through investments in market development and thus strengthening sales in all markets. The signals from our customers in form of projects and the order situation is positive, production levels are stabilising and the forecast for 2020 is therefore cautious but nevertheless optimistic.

The pure supply of fastener and fixing technology and DIN and standard parts is no longer sufficient in economically uncertain times. Industrial customers need much more. C-parts management is successful when procurement processes and intralogistics on the customer side are not only managed and optimised reliably, but also networked. To this end, the aim is to simplify processes and exploit synergies in order to offer a fast, smooth flow of information and a uniformly high-quality standard for products and networked system solutions at European level. This frees up capacities for core processes and reduces process costs and complexity in the customer’s factory, resulting in higher productivity.

This means concrete approaches to bundling suppliers for direct and indirect materials, reducing the variety of parts; providing design support for special and drawing parts; simplifying processes through fully automated procurement and logistics systems; and providing a holistic supply of a concept and a partner for production materials and auxiliary and operating materials. For this reason, the strategic and customer-oriented further development of the system landscape continued to be at the forefront in 2019.

The stocking and reordering of Würth products for the producing customer should be even more system-based, digital and fully automated. An important focus here remains maximum security in the supply of parts directly at the point of consumption, in intralogistics and at the workplace. In future, processes will be so simple and streamlined through solutions such as vending machines, weighing systems, RFID Kanban or the complete integration of a large number of suppliers for other product groups, as well as A/B parts, that customers or production employees no longer have to order themselves. Rather, the intelligent systems independently know the exact material needs and report these fully automatically to the partner for C-parts management. In future, the entire supply chain will be largely self-controlled.

In 2019, we also noticed an increasing trend towards individualisation. This can be seen in particular in inquiries for initial samples, prototypes, certified series parts, spare parts and tools from batch size 1. No matter whether large or small. No matter if a single part, small series or real series production. No matter whether construction drawing or full 3D model. Würth Industrie Service has positioned itself for the future and offers a wide range of different technologies, as well as additive manufacturing processes, and thus an efficient network of partners.

With additive manufacturing, customers can not only reduce lead times, development cycles and total costs for complex components, but also improve their performance, weight, and functionality, and rethink the geometries of developments and components. In meeting all technical requirements, the highest quality standards and a continuous, efficient process are the keys to success. To ensure the quality of the components, Würth Industrie Service has a fully equipped test laboratory with accreditation for currently 50 test procedures according to DIN EN ISO/IEC 17025. This remains an elementary component.

The future will also bring numerous innovations through automation and autonomy.

For us, the expansion of technical possibilities and the optimal use of data streams are at the top of our future strategy when it comes to the optimal supply of C-parts. Collaboration is a central element here. Development is moving away from the pure supplier customer constellation to collaboration and cooperation among each other, resulting in a holistic partner that is integrated into the process landscape. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is still in its infancy. This makes it all the more important for industrial companies to play an active role in shaping this development now in order to be prepared for the innovation push. It remains exciting.