From Automotive Engineering Service Provider to General Industry Supplier
Interview with Michael Böhler, Founder and CEO of sbp
S&B Automotive is now becoming the company sbp, thereby emphatically underlining its ambitions for the future: as the established engineering service provider from the automotive industry wants to leverage its developed solution expertise in plant planning and implementation in significantly broader manufacturing segments. Michael Böhler, CEO, revealed in the interview which values sbp intends to remain faithful to and where other industrial companies often differ significantly from the automotive segment.
Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Böhler, until now your company was known as S&B Automotive Engineering; recently, you have rebranded as sbp with a new corporate identity in the market – why this change?
Michael Böhler: The abbreviation sbp stands for Sandmair Böhler Partner, or in a broader sense: for our past, present, and future. Gerd Sandmair was my founding partner, who left our company five years ago. Today, it is led by me and now I want to prepare it for the next generation together with new leaders whom we have been able to recruit recently.
Wirtschaftsforum: Against this backdrop, the word Automotive has also disappeared from your name, although your customer list reads like the Who‘s Who of the German automotive industry.
Michael Böhler: Our decades-long cooperation with automobile manufacturers and their suppliers has made us strong and will continue to be an essential part of our business activities. Initial experiences in recent years have, however, shown that our comprehensive range of services can also create significant added value in the General Industry sector. We now want to pursue this path even more vigorously – and transform ourselves from an engineering service provider to a solution provider.
Wirtschaftsforum: In which areas do you specifically support your clients?
Michael Böhler: We are primarily engaged in the planning and realization of production facilities. It is important to us to work in a partnership and solution-oriented manner: we listen carefully and are ready to respond quickly.
Wirtschaftsforum: How exactly does the collaboration with your company work?
Michael Böhler: Often, we start with an initial idea workshop with our respective client, discussing how and in what quantities they want to produce their desired products and the level of automation they aim for. After discussions with all involved trades, we then develop two or three solution proposals that we present to the client. If there is interest in further collaboration, we proceed to the meticulous planning phase up to the joint preparation of the tender documents or the planning of internal fixture construction. With our engineering services, we can also design corresponding 2D and 3D constructions in the virtual factory. After each phase, our client has a straightforward exit option.
Wirtschaftsforum: Sometimes you even achieve significant productivity improvements without using a single robot.
Michael Böhler: We were recently commissioned by a vehicle component manufacturer to analyze their assembly line. They wanted to double their output from three vehicles per hour to six – an ambitious but achievable goal in this context. A discussion with the production staff revealed that the recently acquired rotating device was not accepted at all and could thus be removed without any problems – this created space to reorganize the screw storage, which could now be relocated directly to the assembly stations. Together with some additional logistical measures, this made it possible to achieve the desired doubling of output effortlessly – for minimal cost and without a single new technological solution.