HORSCH Supplier Days

On 27th and 28th of September HORSCH organized the Supplier Days in Schwandorf. On the agenda: an extensive program as well as a lot of interesting speeches.

The motto of this year’s Supplier Days was “Managing Turbulent Times”. For this is what the past three years were: very turbulent. And a lot of unprecedented challenges had to be managed. With the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic, the situation for companies and their suppliers, too, became more and more difficult: frontiers were partly closed and transportation routes were cancelled, a lot employees were in lockdown or under quarantine. When economy rose again some time later, we still had to cope with delivery bottlenecks and rising prices. By now, the war in the Ukraine affects economy additionally and the energy crisis does not promise an easing of the situation.

According to Alexander Hack, head of purchasing at HORSCH, the two previous Supplier Days with their mottos “Better Together” and “Get Connected” could not have been more to the point. “We consider our suppliers to be close partners and we attach major importance to a good and trustful co-operation with them. This is the only way to optimally meet the requirements of our customers.”
But in the past years, an intensive contact was difficult. The Supplier Days had to be cancelled because of Covid 19 and it was very difficult to guarantee the supply of the customers. “In the whole supply chain, we made every effort to keep everything going. We only managed together and due to the excellent partnership with our suppliers. I think we proved that we could thus achieve our objectives despite the most difficult conditions and even increase our turnover.”
In this respect, a personal contact and exchange at eye level are indispensable. This is why HORSCH organises the Supplier Days. “There were a lot of interesting discussions, suggestions and and new ideas for the future. This exchange is very valuable and helps us advance together.”

Changing responsibilities

The event started the evening before with a cosy get together and dinner. The next day was marked by speeches about the market development and trends, but also about news from R & D. Especially in the robotics sector, there are a lot of innovations and technologies that develop fast. Digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI) were the topics of the speech held by Dr. Maximilian Braun and Dr. Johann Neidl. Moreover, Dr. Neidl officially passed on the management of the purchasing department to Alexander Hack as in the future he will head the digitalization unit. In their speech they explained how you can develop for example an AI to translate operating manuals automatically and quickly or how you can use calculation tools that automatically calculate the price of a purchase part by means of CAD data. “We continue to grow. Therefore, in addition to reliable partners the digital network is a must, too.”  

During his speech Alexander Hack provided the audience with an insight into the strategic orientation and organisation of the purchasing department. “It is important to create transparency in the supply chain with regard to sustainability, innovation, growth but also risk management. In additon, the production department is in the end-of-year spurt and this is why we depend on our suppliers. Moreover, we have to make use of falling commodity prices and economise expensive energy.“
After that, Philipp Horsch gave an insight into the entrepreneurial spirit of the Horsch family. He sees great potential in the agricultural sector which is essential to be able to continue to feed the constantly growing world population.