AUTOMATE – OPTIMIZE – PROFIT

Interview with Michael Stolzer, Managing Partner of STOPA Anlagenbau GmbH

STOPA Trade Fair Appearance
The trade fair appearance in Düsseldorf at TUBE showed the STOPA LG-T with the tipping lifting station as part of the tube process chain together with Trumpf and Starmatik

Over the past decades, STOPA Anlagenbau GmbH has not only made a name for itself as a premium manufacturer of automated storage systems for sheet metal and long goods, but also offers innovative solutions with its parking systems for numerous challenges brought about by further urban densification. With Wirtschaftsforum, Managing Partner Michael Stolzer discussed current innovations.

Wirtschaftsforum: Mr. Stolzer, the core competency of your company primarily lies in the development of storage systems for sheet metal and long goods. What solutions do you specifically offer in this area?

Michael Stolzer: Our customer range extends from craft businesses seeking a targeted solution for a relatively manageable component portfolio, to large OEMs who want their storage environment to be integrated as closely as possible into the production processes as part of a comprehensive automation approach. Given these various complex objectives of our customers, our own product range also varies. For example, our basic tower STOPA ECO PLUS can already represent a sufficiently dimensioned solution when the aim is simply to optimally utilize the space available in the workshop through a simple high-bay warehouse as a stand-alone solution.

Wirtschaftsforum: And what does the more complex version look like?

Michael Stolzer: STOPA, together with our partner TRUMPF, also offers comprehensive process chains that are perfectly embedded into the networked production of the customer environment. Such a process chain was presented by us at this year's TUBE in Düsseldorf together with TRUMPF and STARMATIK: Within this process chain, STOPA covers the sub-areas from the goods reception of the long goods through their storage in our tower warehouse and the separation of the long goods using our connected tipping lift station to the handover to TRUMPF's tube laser. At the end of the process chain, a robot from STARMATIK picks up the profiles and stacks them accordingly onto a suitable load carrier.
Another variant for connecting several tube lasers would consist of using a bridge warehouse instead of a tower warehouse, as shown in Düsseldorf. This met with keen interest, especially among customers who have already implemented comprehensive Smart Factory applications in the sheet metal sector and various long goods applications, particularly in the automotive segment, where complex tubular frameworks are required for the production of electric cars. Currently, we are developing initial layouts for such solutions with some customers.

STOPA Anlagenbau GmbH Compact Parking System
The compact parking system from stolzer allows up to three times the number of parking spaces in a parking area

Wirtschaftsforum: What role does the extensive collaboration of STOPA with the company TRUMPF play?

Michael Stolzer: As a grown expert in mechanical engineering applications and Smart Factory solutions, TRUMPF SE + Co. KG is not only a valued partner with whom we have been working trustfully for 35 years but also our minority shareholder, holding 25.1% of STOPA's company shares today. The excellent complementation of our mutual expertise and core competencies offers both companies important unique features in the market, as it enables us to offer our customers comprehensive solutions from a single source – from storage over the actual tube laser to many other facilities. As we see a rapidly growing demand in the market, especially for automating long goods warehouses, important synergies also arise in the further development of our solutions through our cooperation with TRUMPF.
 
Wirtschaftsforum: In addition to storage solutions, STOPA now also offers parking systems, whose value proposition extends far beyond merely space-saving vehicle storage.

Michael Stolzer: Here too, we have solutions for application environments of any complexity. For example, our Compact parking system is ideally suited for multi-family homes with 20 to 30 parking spots and very limited ground area. As the number of cars to be stored increases, while the available plot still offers less space, our Tower parking systems, which can be built up to 50 m high, often represent a targeted solution. Given the further increasing urban densification and a likely even greater future need for individual mobility solutions, we anticipate significant growth opportunities in this area, which is why we recently spun this division off into its own business unit.

STOPA Anlagenbau GmbH Energy Campus
Headquarters of STOPA Anlagenbau GmbH in Achern with the Stopa Energy Campus under construction

Wirtschaftsforum: Your parking systems offer a smart solution for a well-known problem with charging electric vehicles.

Michael Stolzer: Fundamentally, network operators only allow five charging points per underground garage to prevent possible overloading of the electricity grid – since the available charging capacities are thus massively limited, this causes not only understandable frustration for users of electric vehicles but sometimes also a real limitation of their mobility. With our parking systems, we can permanently solve this problem with a clever technical solution and at the same time provide a seamless and elegant user experience: When the driver places his vehicle on the respective pallet in one of our parking systems and indicates that he wants it charged, the pallet along with the vehicle is moved in his absence to one of our charging points and connected to the electricity grid. Once the charging process is complete, the pallet automatically moves on to the designated parking spot, and the charging point can be used by the next vehicle – instead of being unnecessarily occupied by the already fully charged vehicle for hours as in a conventional underground garage.

Wirtschaftsforum: An important impulse for the change in mobility – how important is sustainability to your own company?

Michael Stolzer: A central element of our related ambitions is certainly the Stopa Energy Campus currently under construction, in the course of which we want to obtain 80% of our electricity needs from our own photovoltaic systems starting in 2025. In the long run, we aim to operate completely energy self-sufficiently and produce climate-neutral according to Scope 1 and 2 by 2030. We also intend to generate the nitrogen needed for our own laser processes ourselves using our surplus electricity production by the end of this year at the latest. Our ambitious corporate goals thus extend far beyond just our further growth.