FITMA: A great opportunity to have an event where you can really, again, have a face-to-face discussion

I think FITMA is going to be a great opportunity to have an event where you can really, again, without being in the Zoom, have a face-to-face discussion. And I think it is very critical, specifically for Heidenhain and Acu-Rite products, that customers can touch and feel what we offer because it's very difficult to do that in a virtual environment. You want to be able to stand in front of the customer and the customer should be able to push some buttons and understand how things work. 

You can assist them if you have any questions. And I think there's a lot of new technology we are offering now on the digital readout side of the five-axis CNC, but also on monitoring software to monitor productivity and efficiency, as well as some new training tools we offer now for customers to teach their operators and the next generation operators or people who want to learn new technology. All these things are better done when you are in front of a computer or in front of a control or a digital readout system, it makes much more sense to interact with your customer.

That's why I'm hoping to achieve it at the trade show next year at FITMA. Mexico is a perfect place to support this effort to bring more manufacturing applications and manufacturing back to the North American region so we can respond faster to things.

We are a little bit less independent, and I think the relationship between Mexico and the United States is so close that Mexico will also support this new wave of more manufacturing in North America. And that's why we want to be at this trade show to talk to the customers and make them also aware of new PLC technology so they can apply this technology to be really competitive compared to maybe some Asian competitors.

Because Mexico is near the United States, we have a lot of benefits to work together. But if the Mexican manufacturing industry doesn't understand what technologies are available, how can they be more productive? How can they apply new five-axis technology on these machines? They may not be chosen to be a supplier.

I think it's important for us to educate the industry and help them to understand what's out there. We're going to focus on our key products for any type of level of a shop. It could be a small shop. It could be somebody wants to start out to become a shop, but it can also go all the way to a larger company. So we're going to bring different products to the show.

See here the video of the interview with Gisbert Ledvon, business development director of Heidenhain.