On the third day, we had an introduction to Climeworks which was followed by a Design Thinking workshop by our Platinum Partner Accenture. We were encouraged to be creative in teams, while there was no right or wrong. In the Afternoon, we virtually visited the headquarter of our Joint Platinum Partner Blaser Swisslube. Mathias Schaller, Head of SCM told us about successful supply chain management in India. Tobias Röder, Head of Product Management, shared with us the challenges in global pricing by the example of India. After the virtual company visit, we got an introduction to our Platinum Partner Zenith Zechnologies. Franck Palacios Mora and former Delegation Member Roman Hofer gave us interesting insights into the company.
Stéphane Piqué – Introduction to Climeworks and Design Thinking Workshop by Accenture
Design Thinking Workshop by Accenture
Stephan Pique showed us how Accenture and Climeworks got in touch and what Accenture’s motivation is behind the collaboration. Accenture mainly wants to support Climeworks regarding the digitalization of their project. Furthermore, he showed us the technical specifications behind the innovation.
Climeworks is an ETH spinoff which developed a modular system filtering carbon dioxide from air at an energy efficiency rate of 90%. By using a fan the machine transports air through a filter and releases carbon dioxide free air back to the atmosphere. Once the filter is full of carbon dioxide the machine closes, heats up to 200 degree Celsius to relief the CO2 in gaseous form. This “waste” then may be permanently disposed.
As this industry is very young and still sticks in its fledgling stages there is currently only one real competitor called “Carbon Engineering” which is based in the US. Nevertheless, their technological solution is from a development perspective about two years behind Climeworks’ solutions they are catching up very quickly.
Currently they offer private individuals the opportunity to subscribe in three different models on a monthly payment base. For CHF 7.- you can get the so called “light” package, for CHF 24.- the “thoughtful” and for CHF 50.- the “committed”.
This year Climeworks will go life with their latest CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) plant called “Orca” in Island. This plant is expected to filter up to 4’000 tons Carbon Dioxide per year. Special about this plant were the governmental requirements about the design which had to be aligned with the local rural preconditions. Another interesting fact was that Climeworks could only apply 40% of their know-how from their former projects to this one because of the very fast technological progress. This maybe shows the way technological Start-Ups work better than any other fact or figure: Everything is changing every time they work on it.
Then we went into our breakout sessions to develop Ideas for Climeworks which we then presented to the responsible people at Accenture.
– Written by Sanja Cvijetinovic & Mark Wittmer
Blaser Swisslube AG – Virtual Visit of HQ in Hasle-Rüegsau
On Wednesday afternoon we had the pleasure to meet Basel Swisslube AG for the second time during this preparatory seminar week. Blaser Swisslube has been a joint partner of all four FHNW International Student projects for many years. The Wednesday afternoon started with a company presentation by Mr. Kaeser and a little quiz. Despite not being able to visit the company in Emmental, because of the pandemic, the Focus India delegates had the opportunity to experience an interactive online tour through the factory with a live demonstration of the coolant manufacturing process. Followed by the second part of the presentation, which focused on Blaser’s supply chain management in India and its global pricing strategy.
Blaser is a global company which manufactures metalworking fluids and liquid tools. Its primary mission is to support the value-based solution selling approach by ensuring both the highest reliability in terms of product quality and product availability to the end-customer. Today, the Indian market is one of the largest export markets in Asia for Blaser. As well as significant growth potential, there have also been challenges for the family company. Even though the “license raj” has been abolished, there are still many licensing and regulatory issues, which complicate doing business in India. Each state has still its specific regulation on logistics and taxes. The potential of road, rail and port infrastructure has yet to be fully exploited and a freetrade agreement between Switzerland and India is still being negotiated. There is furthermore a tendency for a potential preference for locally made products, which India is trying to promote with its “Make in India” policy. While Indian customers are generally open to the idea of “quality over low price”, there can be a reluctance to pay a premium for the quality even though the liquid tool demonstrates overall cost savings through increased productivity and extended tool life.
To ensure smooth course of operations and business continuity Blaser needs to be extremely agile. So, how have they managed to transform the challenges of doing business in India into opportunities? India is different and so are Indians states different too. The relationship with India and with Indian people is key to understanding this difference. Blaser has a strong intrinsic interest to maintain sustainable business with India. That is why Blaser reorganized its supply chain setup in 2016. The manufacturing operations have been re-allocated to the plant in Switzerland. In order to be closer to customers, the distribution footprint in India has been expanded by establishing three additional distribution centers. A local laboratory has also been setup to ensure shortest first-level response times and to achieve much greater proximity to customers. Thus, an airbridge between Switzerland and India could be created. In response to India’s price sensitivity, Blaser campaigns with its leverage effect. Indeed, coolant is more expensive, but this investment can save up to 35% of tooling and machining costs just by using the Blaser coolant technology. Assuming that a strong reduction in unit costs can be achieved through the internet of things (IoT), this may be the next powerful tool for Blaser to address the challenges in the Indian environment.
– Written by Blerta Buqa & Yves Saladin
Blaser Swisslube AG
Franck Palacios Mora, Zenith Technologies – Company Introduction
Zenith Technologies
On Wednesday afternoon, 17 February, Zenith Technologies presented its company. Zenith is a cognizant company and is the world leader in automation and Digital Transformation solution to life science. Their solutions are used for important treatments for patients all over the world. Zenith Technologies operates across several countries in Europe, America and Asia. Since 2017 the company is also present in Switzerland.
Roman, who was also a part of the Focus India Project a few years ago, today works for Zenith Technologies and contributed together with Franck and Stephen in the interactive presentation.
First of all, Franck Palacios introduced the company’s products and goals through a short video. Further explaining how Zenith satisfies customer demands and what kind of services they provide. This video showed the future orientation of the company and the large potential ahead. Zenith was founded in 1998 and has 16 offices worldwide. They work mostly with Pharma and Biotech companies like Novartis, Roche etc. Through their knowledge and expertise they are able to deliver manufacturing systems that are optimized to improve efficiency. Furthermore, the aim of their products are to improve performance, reduce costs and decrease time to market. In addition, they also deliver industry 4.0 architecture and solutions covering several applications, infrastructures and services.
Finally the Focus India delegates were informed about their Graduate programs. Zenith enables students in their graduate programs to gain experience in a context of impressive technologies; recruits also have the possibility to work from abroad as the company is strongly networked all over the world. The Graduate Program acquires interest in life sciences. They are looking for students from life science, mechatronics, electronics, IT. Mostly disciplines to support the business.
In Conclusion there was some time to ask questions. There was a strong interest from the audience in the growth of the company and topics like digitalization. Franck emphasized the importance of digitalization and talked also about his past and his experiences. Digitalization was a main topic in every company he worked for. He explained that the importance of digitalization has increased tremendously and that is what also what makes Zenith successful.
In the future they have planned to hire graduates and a lot more employees to grow in Switzerland. In Switzerland they have just started their business three years ago in 2017. With 300 employees currently in Switzerland, their goal is to increase that number in the future. According to Franck there is a lot of potential and he explained that this is also why they are looking for graduates. With their innovative products, they want to achieve success by bringing digitalization and automatization forward.
– Written by Abdulatif Muhamad Abubakar