© Christa Henke

“We have to stay active and keep rein­venting ourselves”

Stefan Brandl (48) became Chairman of the Board of Direc­tors of the ebm-papst Group in January 2017. An inter­view with the sales pro and inno­vator makes clear the path to be taken by ebm-papst.


Mr. Brandl, what will change with you in the top posi­tion?

Every­thing will change that a company needs to change in order to react nimbly to market trends, and of course my board colleagues and I have been working on our Strategy 2020 since mid-2016. Its corner­stones include growing the Group together, estab­lishing speedy units close to the customer, and expanding our market and tech­nology lead­er­ship. In addi­tion, we want to posi­tion ourselves more strongly in the growth regions of Asia and North America — not just for sales but also with R&D and produc­tion facil­i­ties.

What will it take to expand the company’s tech­nology lead­er­ship?

Short CV

Stefan Brandl studied elec­trical engi­neering with focus on energy tech­nology at the Univer­sity of Applied Sciences in Schwe­in­furt. He began his profes­sional career at ebm-papst in 1991. He has been Managing Director of ebm-papst Land­shut since February 2007.

Along with effi­ciency improve­ments, digi­tal­iza­tion will be the deci­sive factor. Our prod­ucts are already prepared for Industry 4.0 now and play an impor­tant role in the smart home. Today we already generate 40 percent of our revenue with prod­ucts that are less than three years old. With our above-average R&D invest­ments of about ten percent of revenue, we’ll continue to improve our rate of inno­va­tion. The focus will be on the tran­si­tion from compo­nent supplier to systems provider. With fans, we’ll concen­trate on further effi­ciency increases through better aero­dy­namics.

What qual­i­ties are impor­tant to you for contacts with customers?

We need to be first-class listeners, we have to under­stand what the needs of our customers are and then imple­ment them precisely with an effi­cient solu­tion. A solu­tion with which our customer can signif­i­cantly reduce its oper­ating costs or increase its perfor­mance. In the ideal case, it can do both. I will make every effort to help ebm-papst further expand its leading posi­tion as number one in the inter­na­tional market for fans and motors. We can do that if we continue to be an active company that keeps rein­venting itself.

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