Phoenix Contact is a global leader and innovator in the development and production of solutions for electrical engineering and automation products. The company has locations in dozens of countries across the globe and Member of the Executive Board Frank Stührenberg will be a panel speaker at our upcoming Turkish-German Innovation Summit. Here is part of a recent interview we did with Mr. Stührenberg to learn more about how Phoenix Contact has become so successful today. The full interview can be read in our upcoming newsletter.
GSC: According to the slogan on your website, you develop “Solutions for the Future.” How do you manage to identify the latest trends and industry demands as well as to account for the development of your products, ranging from electronics housing to measurement and control systems to wireless data communication technologies? What is research and development like at Phoenix Contact?
Frank Stührenberg: Phoenix Contact is a worldwide leader in products, solutions and systems for electronics and automation. We are a rapidly growing company that aspires to be a technological leader through its products and solutions. Therefore, we maintain close contact with our customers in order to develop products that match their needs, and through this we keep up with current market demands. This close market and customer relation allows us to identify technological trends early on and develop our own solutions for them. From this, we become leaders in innovating new technologies.
GSC: Phoenix Contact’s product portfolio is full of the newest technologies, such as safe control solutions, and seems to have everything an industrial producer could want! What distinguishes your products from competitors?
Frank Stührenberg: Phoenix Contact is a company that has established "Inspiring Innovation" as a corporate philosophy in order to continuously implement new trends and technologies into the latest products and solutions as well as to optimize existing products. Through this we provide customers with products that meet current and future market demands. Each year we expand our portfolio, which today contains some 60,000 products, by 1,000 to 2,000 new products. Thanks to our in-house engineering, we are also able to test these products ourselves, which in turn means that feedback and our own experiences can be immediately incorporated into the product development. The diversity of our product offerings for electrical engineering and automation, which offers customers a single source for system solutions, helps users simplify their processes in addition to other product advantages.
GSC: Phoenix Contact has made a commitment to national and international training programs for technical jobs. Your engagement is characterized by a network of partnerships with a sizable list of international universities. The EduNet initiative, which was founded by Phoenix Contact in 2007, is a collective response to global technology trends and developments. Your company is cooperating in this framework with the Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, Turkey, among others. What potential do you see in the Turkish market?
Frank Stührenberg: This commitment to technical education is an important, cross-border issue for Phoenix Contact. As part of our collaborations in Turkey with universities like the Yildiz Technical University, Selcuk University and the Turkish German University, we have established projects like laboratories for automation. Thus, students receive not only practical experiences with modern automation technology, but they also form their experiences through direct contact with Phoenix Contact's products. Turkey's status as a strong emerging market and an important hub for neighboring countries in the growing southeast European and Middle Eastern regions has important implications for our growth and the growth of the Turkish economy. With our sales company, founded in 1986, we have already noted for years a strong, more than double-digit growth, which accompanies the local added value from our manufacturing joint venture in Bursa since 2011.
