Kübler Group : The success story of 50 years

Mr. Gebhard Kuebler and Lothar Kuebler - Men behind the success

Q. You have been managing Kübler now for more than 10 years very successfully. This year the Kübler group turns 50 years. What drives you?
Gebhard Kübler: It is a great honor, opportunity and commitment at the same time that we could take over our fathers business in 1997 and keep developing it to today’s size with a committed team and customers. To some extent we see our job to help our employees to excel. When we get feedback from our customers, stating that they are happy with the way we serve them, pleased with the way we solved their application problems, let me tell you, this is sheer motivation and pride of our team that again did a great job. We grew with our customers and not only were able to establish many solid business relations, but many personal friendships. In a way, this is what business is all about, creating growth and creating strong human relations. I have a baby girl 5 months old, and my brother has 2 boys and one girl, so the foundation is already laid for the next generation. Our strong motivation and unilateral driving force is to remain a global player and yet a family business at the same time.

Q. Kübler operates since mid-2009 with a new business structure. What is the organization of the new structure and why has it been changed?
Lothar Kübler: Until now, we had two main business areas: encoders on the one hand and counters and process devices on the other hand. In the past years, we grew the encoders with lengths measurement and position sensors as well as inclinometers. For this reason, we grouped this business to become our Position and Motion Sensor Technology. Today this is our main business, with approximately 60% of our turnover. Counters and Process products remain important and with approximately 25% of our turnover they are an important product area. Since the need of our customers for data and power transmission is increasing, we created our Transmission technology business unit, with slip rings, cables, connectors and fiber optic transmission modules. Today, this business area achieves almost 10% of our turnover, we see a huge potential for growth. Our fourth spectrum, OEM Products and Systems, develops customer-specific solutions, which we may turn at a later stage into standard products.

Q. Which new products are available to the users in these areas?
Gebhard Kübler :  For the drive industry, medical industry and the machine market we have developed the new encoder generation Sendix F36. These high-accuracy single and multiturn absolute encoders with a resolution of up to 41 bits are the only encoders in the world that are 100% optical, without gears. They are 100% insensitive to magnetic fields, so motor breaks will not in any method hamper their functionality.  And their size is only 36 millimeters, with a hollow shaft or shaft diameter of up to 10 millimeters. All these top performances have already been rewarded with several design awards. New absolute Atex Singleturn and multiturn encoders are also part of our newest products. They are designed in compliance with the ‘Flameproof enclosure’ type of protection and released for zones 1, 2, 21 and 22 and can be used in all EX-hazardous areas.

We have developed new shaft position systems for the elevator industry, together with a specialized controller.For the mobile vehicle market we have developed special encoders that are particularly rugged.
Our offering of incremental encoders Sendix family is constantly being Innovated and Improvised. Right now they are all up to IP 67 and have an extremely rugged design to ensure that they can meet demanding applications both mechanically and electrically. We have also launched a new generation of low cost but German high quality preset counters, Codix 907/908 recently.

Headquarters Kubler in Villingen – Schwenningen, Germany

Q. Which product areas show the largest potential for Your Company?
Gebhard Kübler: We see a large potential in the area of absolute encoders, fieldbus encoders, encoders with special interfaces. We see strong growth for our entire Sendix line of encoders – which has become the synonym for state of the art encoder technology, incremental and absolute.  Not only the ruggedness, both electrically and mechanically, but also the wide range of versions has contributed to this. IN India such features are very important, because Indian customers are very demanding and the handling of our products in the field is often tough. That is the reason why we placed our first production line out side Germany for Sendix encoders into India.

Other growth areas are our linear products the magnet bands and the draw wire encoders. Our slip ring range has a lot of potential, too. We will soon launch two new slip rings. In the counting technology area, we developed two important products, the Codix 907/908 and Codix 560. The trend in preset counting goes towards simple solutions. When users have more complex solutions, they tend to use a PLC. For simple tasks  a preset counter is a preferred  choice. A very important point for these counters: they must have an easily readable display. For example, the Codix 560 has a large LED display that remains readable even when it is exposed to light or to the sun. The servicing area also offers a huge market. Wherever service intervals must be counted or maintenance intervals must be recorded, there are small service pulse counter modules with double functions, which allow recording service cycles and total operating times and issuing pre-alarm signals.

Q. Which target industries do you want to concentrate on?
Lothar Kübler: I have to explain first. Today we see a trend that industrial sectors need industry specific solutions. Following that trend, we defined areas, where we concentrate our activities to develop such tailored products. We call them strategic target industries. To give you examples. We supply the wind turbines industry with high-accuracy optical encoders, which nevertheless are very robust and operate reliably in rough environments. Thanks to the insensitivity of their sensor technology to magnetic fields and to an option with an integrated resolver, they suit perfectly for pitch and azimuth regulation. For the elevator industry, we have complete shaft positioning systems and specialized encoders.

We supply to a many of the big global players companies in the lift industry. For the drive industry, e.g. AC drives, geared motors, Generators etc. We have specific encoders to meet their future needs. Other such sectors include the steel industry, the medical technology, mobile automation (cranes, forklift trucks, construction machines etc.) as well as the packaging industry.

Q. Which targets do you have for the next 5 years in terms of your global development ? 
Lothar Kübler: The global economic slowdown in 2009 had an impact on our business as well. All in all we lost sales, however we could compensate quite a bit due to strong growth in Asia and due to several fairly large new OEMs. 2010 started very well for us, we are actually up in sales by more then 30%.

Q. What is our long term plan?
Well generally we will remain a very dynamic growth driven family business, independent from third parties. We were able to grow in the last 10 years from € 7m to € 30m and will continue to do so. We will develop our three business areas (sensors for length, position, speed and rotation, counters & Process and Transmission products) with a high number of new innovations and patents. Parallel to that we continue to stand for expertise in solutions, flexibility, High German quality and excellent service. We will work on our target to become the preferred supplier to many more customers, a supplier with whom our customers like to work the most.

Product innovation-  The success factor

Q. How do you plan to develop your Indian operations? 
Gebhard Kübler: Basically the same targets apply for our India business. Kübler already today is “the” name when it comes to encoders, thank to a successful cooperation with our distributor Rajdeep automation. Not only do we want to strengthen this position, but we want to introduce a lot of our other products into the Indian market. Chances are good, since Kübler is different to other European suppliers in India, because we show an over average commitment to India. I myself established our daughter company recently and I take great personal interest into providing not only a sales network, but moreover strong local service, so that customers do not have to wait long times to get service from overseas. Most importantly we are the first MNC to have a full fledged state of the art encoder assembly line in India, with the same high end quality than the line in Germany. In India our Vice President of Sales and Marketing Rajesh Bahl establishes a sales network all over the country. We support and cooperate strongly with key distribution & Alliance Partners.