VDMA REPORTS POWER TRANSMISSION ENGINEERING MARKET UPSWING
Time：13 Sep,2021
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/ueditor/php/upload/image/20210913/1631516454102531.png" title="1631516454102531.png" alt="6.png"/></p><p>At the board meeting of the VDMA Power Transmission Association
on July 15, 2021, the sales forecast from the spring
was increased from plus 5 percent to plus 10 percent.
The decisive factor here is the strong increase in incoming
orders since the beginning of the year, which in the period
from January to May 2021
are up 33 percent compared
to the same period
last year. Important customer
groups, such as
wind power, agricultural
technology, construction
machinery and materials
handling technology,
as well as the important export markets of the United
States and China are supporting this development. However,
a major challenge for both customers and suppliers are the
restrictions in the global supply chains, which lead to delivery
difficulties and cost pressure along the value chain.</p><p><br/></p><p>10 percent increase in turnover expected </p><p>Despite these challenges, the industry is confident that it will
close the current year with an increase in turnover of at least
10 percent. Due to the customer structure and product diversity
of power transmission engineering, growth can vary
greatly from company to company. Some companies in the
automotive supply environment still have major transformation
processes ahead of them.
The positive outlook should not obscure the fact that the
power transmission engineering sector has come through
the crisis relatively quickly in the post-COVID era, but from
today’s perspective the high production level from 2018 of
just under 18 billion euros cannot be achieved before the
end of 2022.</p><p><br/></p><p>Setting strategic topics in the association’s
work </p><p>Wilhelm Rehm, chairman of the Power Transmission Engineering
Association within the VDMA and member of the
board of management of ZF Friedrichshafen AG, comments:
“Power transmission engineering is technologically well positioned.
The challenges of the future for our industry will
lie in the areas of digitalization–in the process, in the product
and in the supply chain–and in the large area of climate
neutrality, sustainability and circular economy. This is also
reflected in our association work with the strategic lines
Drive4Green and Drive Technology 4.0.”</p><p><br/></p><p> Hartmut Rauen, managing director of the Power
Transmission Association within the VDMA, adds: “Today,
Germany is the best innovation area for power transmission
engineering and it also wants to remain the best production
area. The industry is highly committed and is currently managing
around 200 research projects at top universities with
its Drive Technology Research Association (FVA e.V.), which are addressing precisely these issues. However, in times of
massive transformation processes, we need a transparent
cost-benefit analysis from a new federal government, as well
as from the EU, and framework conditions that are as market-based
and open to technology as possible. In addition,
the competitiveness of the production location must be at
the center of policy in order to leverage the potential for climate
protection.”</p><p><br/></p><p> With 92,300 employees (2020, in Germany), power transmission
engineering is the largest sector within the mechanical
engineering industry. The components and systems of
power transmission engineering are the decisive performance
modules. They are where power, torque and data
flow together in one movement. The industry is well positioned
thanks to the VDMA’s push to build a global Industry
4.0 ecosystem, as Rauen explains: “We are working on the
digital twin, machine information interoperability, laying
the foundations for digital-based processes and will also use
them to efficiently realize the solutions towards intelligently
networked, climate-neutral production.”</p>
