Interview: HF digital step-up

Hanovder, Germany - Machinery major HF Group is looking to step up its approach to developing and providing digital technology-based products and services to the tire and rubber industries.

Leading delivery of the strategy is Dr Bernd Pape, who recently joined the Hamburg, Germany-based company with extensive machine-building experience outside of the tire industry.

As head of HF Tire Tech Group’s newly established Digital Solutions unit, Pape’s remit is to strengthen the equipment maker’s approach to the development and delivery of digital solutions to customers.

The focus, he said, is on how HF designs and produces digital products, gets them to market and connects all of its machine-building competencies – in tire-building and curing – with digital capabilities.

In an interview with ERJ, Pape described his new employer as “a really strong, traditional machine-building company with excellent engineers and neat software and automation solutions.”

But Digital Solutions is a “whole new product segment,” said Pape, adding that HF is approaching this “as if we were building a completely new type of machine. One that has never been seen before.”

Key to doing that, he said, is to ask customers about what they really need and then relate that feedback to the machinery maker’s key capabilities and how it leverages these strengths with digital technologies.

Read the full interview in the July/August issue of European Rubber Journal magazine – also available online in the Featured Content section under the Focus tab on the ERJ website homepage.