Best management!

Award serves as motivation on the path to becoming a global solutions provider.

The HIMA Group is the recipient of the Best Managed Companies Award 2026. With this award, Deloitte Private, UBS, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and the Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie e. V. (BDI) honour excellently managed companies as an incentive and role model for others to shape the future with strategic foresight, innovative strength, a sustainable leadership culture, and sound corporate governance.

Dr. Michael Löbig and Jörg de la Motte

HIMA impressed the jury in all four areas:

• Strategy,
• Productivity & Innovation,
• Culture & Commitment, and
• Governance & Finance. 

With 22 group companies and targeted acquisitions in strategically important markets, HIMA has consistently expanded its international presence in recent years. At the same time, the company is evolving from a product manufacturer into a global solutions provider for safety-critical applications in the process and rail industries. The award confirms the strategic course of the internationally active family-owned company, which is actively shaping the digitalization of functional safety, expanding its global presence, and making targeted investments in innovation.

“For us as shareholders, this award underscores that the management team stands for high-quality management and credible leadership, and meets our expectations for successful and responsible corporate development,” says Steffen Philipp, shareholder of the HIMA Group.

“This award fills us with great pride. It is a recognition of the commitment and daily dedication of our team worldwide. At the same time, it serves as an incentive for us to consistently continue on our chosen path: the transformation from a product manufacturer to a global solutions provider. With initiatives such as our Innovation Lab himalaya and the Customer Solutions Center, we are laying the foundation to actively drive digitalization and innovation in functional safety,” says Jörg de la Motte, CEO of the HIMA Group.

“Our growth is based on a clear long-term strategy and consistent implementation,” says Dr. Michael Löbig, CFO of the HIMA Group. “This includes targeted investments in our international presence as well as successful acquisitions that strengthen our expertise and market access. The trust our shareholders place in this path is a decisive factor in our success.”

“Rarely has excellent corporate leadership been more important than in these challenging times. Best Managed Companies such as HIMA set benchmarks when it comes to agility and resilience: they respond quickly to today’s multiple changes and consistently view transformation as a mandate to shape the future. In an environment where what once seemed familiar is increasingly being called into question, these qualities deserve special recognition. With the Best Managed Companies Award, we honor companies that lead the way, act with courage, and serve as outstanding role models for Germany’s Mittelstand. HIMA acts with a confidence that provides orientation – now more than ever,” says Dr. Christine Wolter, Partner at Deloitte and Lead Deloitte Private.

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@DeloitteDE #Hima  #Safety #PAuto 

In top quarter for management!

Intelliconnect have participated in the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) Management and Expectations Survey (MES) 2020*. Overall Intelliconnect’s management practices scored 0.84 on a scale from 0 to 1, compared to an average score of 0.60 across Great Britain. This places Intelliconnect in the top 25% of respondents.

Intelliconnect in top 25 percent of  ONS MES

Roy Phillips, Managing Director of Intelliconnect (Europe), comments, “We are very proud to be listed in the top 25% of respondents to the latest ONS Management and Expectations Survey. Our continued success is due to the close relationships we have with our customers and the commitment of workforce. After a year of exceptional sales growth, we have relocated our sales, engineering and production facilities to larger premises and will be recruiting new staff at all levels including offering apprenticeships. We are completely signed up to high quality, responsible and ethical manufacturing practices and to ensuring the best possible conditions in the workplace for all of our Team.”

This is the largest ever survey of British business management capabilities, executed on a population of 25,000 companies across industries, regions, firm sizes and ages, documenting the variable quality of management practices. Intended to help  business’ get through the impact of the current economic uncertainty the survey notes that, in Britain and internationally, firms with higher management practice scores on average tend to have higher productivity and profits.

The overall management practices score takes into account all the different tools and practices used to run a particular business, over four categories: continuous improvement, KPIs, targets and employment practices.

Intelliconnect have a policy of continuous improvement in working practices and during 2020 achieved accreditation to ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, adding to their existing ISO 9001:2015 quality standard and SC21 Silver performance standard for the Aerospace, Security and Space Industry Supply Chain Programme. Intelliconnect are also members of the Living Wage Foundation.

* The UK Management and Expectations Survey (MES) was first conducted in 2017 and again in 2020 by a consortium of academics who belong to the Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence (ESCoE) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The MES revealed significant variation in management practices amongst British firms that were otherwise similar in terms of workforce composition, industry, age and size. Free mentoring is offered for companies wishing to find ways to improve their management scores.

@Intelli_Connect @proactivefleet #Pauto #Management #Britain

Changes at the top!

A number of senior management changes have been announced by the Endress+Hauser Group. Effective 1 March 2019, Dr Andreas Mayr will become Chief Operating Officer (COO) responsible for sales, production and support, thus assuming more responsibility on the Executive Board. In this function he will serve as deputy CEO to Matthias Altendorf.

Dr Andreas Meyr

The impetus behind the reorganization is the increasing dynamic of digitalization, the fluctuating economic and political environment, and last but not least, the sustained growth of the internationally active Group. “We want to continue to actively shape this transformation,” explained Klaus Endress, President of the Supervisory Board. “By bundling the operational responsibility of the Group in the hands of a COO, we can free up more time for the CEO to focus on his activities.”

Matthias Altendorf, who has led the family-owned company since 2014, will focus more intensely on aligning, growing and strengthening the Endress+Hauser Group, as well as further anchoring the corporate culture and values into the global network of companies. Apart from strategy, business development and digitalization, the CEO will concentrate on further expanding the laboratory analysis business.

Andreas Mayr (57), as Corporate Director of Marketing & Technology, was already a member of the Group’s Executive Board. He holds a doctorate in physics and joined Endress+Hauser in 1998. In his new role, he will focus all of his time and efforts on helping to manage the Group.

Dr. Peter Selders

His successor as CEO of Endress+Hauser SE+Co. KG in Maulburg, Germany – the Group’s center of competence for level and pressure measurement technology – effective 1 January 2019 will be Dr Peter Selders (49), who has been Head of Main Division, Technology to date.

On 1 October 2018, Jörg Stegert joined the Group to oversee the entire personnel area as Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO).

Joerg Stegert

Jörg Stegert joined the Executive Board on 1 October 2018 to head up the Group’s human resources area. The 48-year-old was most recently Head of Human Resources at Knorr-Bremse AG in Munich. There he supported the company at the executive level and oversaw projects in the HR area such as the establishment of international structures and a state-of-the-art IT landscape for HR applications. Jörg Stegert is furthermore familiar with issues related to internal communications and training and education. He replaces Roland Kienzler who left the company to pursue other opportunities.

The Executive Board of the Endress+Hauser Group also includes Dr Manfred Jagiella (Corporate Director, Process Analysis Business), Chief Information Officer Pieter de Koning (IT), Chief Sales Officer Nikolaus Krüger (sales and service), Chief Financial Officer Dr Luc Schultheiss (finance) and General Counsel Dr Heiner Zehntner (legal).

@Endress_Hauser #Pauto

All change!

"Leadership is not just a position, it is also the act of leading!"

Successful organizations never stop leading change. Thus in our constantly changing world, an organization’s ability to lead change is critical to its success. In fact looking at the operations of any successful organization, one constant is apparant - that constant is change.

Leading Change, A Practical Guide for Change Agents , authored by Dr. Peggie Ward Koon*, an executive strategist, change leadership and management consultant and coach, is about leading change. She is a past President of the International Society of Automation (ISA) and past Chairman of the Automation Federation.

Leading change is hard. Change leadership—that is, the way the change is led—directly affects the outcome of the change effort. And yet so often, leaders struggle with their change efforts. It’s important to note too that leadership is not just a position (as in a role), it’s also the act of leading!

Change of course impacts and is impacted by people. How people respond to change often determines whether change is successfully adopted and implemented, or if it remains merely an idea or concept. Because of this “people factor,” change must be led. Knowing this, why do change agents repeatedly fail to address the “people factor” as they lead change?

How is change successfully led?  Are there some practical ways to lead change in an organization?  First recognize it is imperitive that leading change is much easier when there is a commitment from the top. Other change agents across the organization should be identified as well – key stakeholders who will both advocate, support and evangelize the change.

The key attributes of change ought to be fully understood. These attributes are called key change factors (KCFs) because they help see how change factors into  - or impacts - the organization, its employees, customers, products and services, processes, and operations. The pages of this book provide examples of companies and individuals who have or are currently leading change successfully. Discover how the KCFs apply to each of these real case studies of change leadership (including some examples from my own professional experience) and learn practical ways to use the KCFs to make your own change leadership initiatives more successful.

Industry Specific Topics include: Academia, Agriculture, Aviation, Government, Healthcare, IT, Manufacturing, News/Media, Sports…and more. Technology Specific Topics include:  Automation, Cybersecurity, Digital Badges, AI, Drones, Robotics, Lightweight Metals, IIoT, IoT, 4IR, Precision Ag, Reality (AR, VR, & MR), Additive Manufacturing (3D & 4D Printing), Automation IT and Containers. Management topics include: Change Leadership, Change Agents, Vision, Strategy & Goals, Key Change Factors, Jumpstarting the Change Effort, Culture, D&I, & Change, and Human Capital Management (HCM).

There is a plethora of books and papers devoted to change, change management, making change, managing change, and similar subjects. Leading Change is different. Instead of focusing specifically on one of these topics, this book focuses on leading change from a practical/practitioner’s point of view.

Each section includes CAPs or Change Agent Perspectives that provide a quick summary of key take-aways for change leadership and change agents. Key Thoughts and Questions at the end of each section help the reader probe more deeply into change opportunities in his or her organization. Section Resources are listed as footnotes at the end of each page to enhance the ease with which you can find additional details related to key concepts and/or topics presented.

"You’ll discover what’s trending now – changes that are occurring right around us—and begin to think about how these changes might impact your operations now and in the future." says author Dr Ward Koon

"What have you changed lately? My hope is that the change agent perspectives and examples of change leadership in this book will encourage and inspire you to lead and/or help make change happen in your organization."

*The Author: Dr Peggie Ward Koon.

Dr. Koon is the CEO and Founder of Leading Change, LLC. She is also the former Vice President of Audience at Chronicle Media, Morris Communications, Augusta, GA (USA). She was the 2014 President of the International Society of Automation (ISA) and the 2015 Chair of the Automation Federation (AF). She has more than 30 years of experience in change leadership for IT and OT systems, with specific expertise in the automotive, aerospace, nuclear reprocessing, insulating products, textile, and media industries.
Dr. Koon received a B.A. in mathematics from Smith College in Northampton, Mass. (USA). She completed 2 years of graduate study in Applied Statistics in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA (USA). And she received a PhD in Management Information Systems from the School of Business at Kennedy Western University in Cheyenne, WY (USA).

How to Produce a Sustainability Report.

A Step by Step Guide to the Practices and Processes.

This book, 'How to Produce a Sustainability Report' provides a step-by-step guide to the constituent practices and processes needed to produce a sustainability report. Author Kye Gbangbola says: “It’s like having a CSR* and sustainability reporting expert in your pocket, helping you to produce/improve your reporting.”

The book shows business and sustainability leaders how to produce disciplined, concise, quality, sustainability and CSR Reports.  It makes reporting accessible to all, guiding you through the process from business case to disseminating the completed report and feedback. 

The authors also provide invaluable tips on how to write a report.  It provides templates which enable reporting practices to be quickly embedded to engage stakeholders and identify 'what is material and where', and guidance on how to secure leadership over process and people. These are important for those organisations seeking to evidence and create value whilst saving time and money in the delivery of quality corporate reporting.

Tony Juniper wrote the Foreword, he describes the business environment needed to make the world function, and needed to manage risks.  This Fellow of the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and President of the Society for the Environment says: 'I hope a great many people read it'.

This book is a masterclass in precisely the things that busy professionals, academics, investors and stakeholders need to know, it points out tactics and strategies that work for maximum beneficial impact.    

* CSR=corporate social responsibility

New automation product suites!

"This release represents the most advanced product suites designed for any manufacturing, building automation, analytics, or plant historian application." This year the focus at Iconics has been on creating products that have a rich set of features and capabilities for the energy and sustainability markets, including expanded scalability and interoperability. These have led to several industry awards and important large projects with end-customer standardisations.

Trial for this and other products downloadable from site!

Included on the product DVDs is the new and improved "Info Center", which contains several new tools that can help in understanding the many new capabilities and features.
Review the latest White Papers and Product Brochures
Review the New Product Briefs for GENESIS64, MobileHMIâ„¢, Energy AnalytiX, Facility AnalytiX and Hyper Historian
Review the over 160 updated application notes
Try out the new GenDemo and explore the many 2D and 3D examples
See the latest literature and product materials
Check out our new Product Videos

Highlights of version 10.7 products include:

GENESIS64 Automation Suite The GENESIS64 Automation Suite is the industry's most advanced Web-enabled 64-bit, HMI/SCADA solution. GENESIS64 was designed for the largest, most demanding SCADA applications yet is simple and cost effective to implement small machine HMI projects. This new release of GENESIS64 v10.7 has hundreds of improvements in the core HMI/SCADA capabilities with many new innovative and customer requested features. A great effort was made to increase overall engineering productivity with new Commanding, BACnet BTL Certification and instant real time dashboarding technology with PortalWorX. A significant effort was made to make the V10.7 product the most tested and highest quality product ever. GENESIS64 v10.7 now includes several important new capabilities not found in any other HMI/SCADA and visualization product. GENESIS64 includes the following functions: AssetWorX - An S95 Intelligent Asset Technology. Users can now define any data as properties of assets and apply sophisticated intelligence to assets. Assets can be defined and organized to represent any item of equipment or operation. AssetWorX significantly decreases the engineering time needed to implement any solution and the intuitive S95 Asset Navigator provides simple and rapid navigation to items of interest for even the largest projects with millions of assets. FDDWorX - A Fault Detection and Diagnostics Technology - Built-in advanced algorithms analyze, detect and predict equipment and efficiency faults. When faults do occur, the system provides a list of monetized probable causes with associated probabilities. PortalWorX-SL - A new integrated Dashboard Technology. Users can easily combine and configure HMI graphic displays, trending, alarming, data grids and other Web Parts into a role-based dashboard. Other Web Parts, such as Energy AnalytiX and Facility AnalytiX views, as well as Internet Explorer Web pages, can also be combined into a new frame-based runtime and roles-based portal. Run PortalWorX dashboards in any popular Web browser, including; Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Internet Explorer and many others. Commanding – Application and Custom Commanding. ICONICS strives to make its products easy to use and, in many cases, scripting is not required. Now, with the new command architecture, the need for scripts is greatly reduced. Select from over 100 included standard commands or build your own reusable customer commands. Commanding is now integrated into the core of all ICONICS products, including GENESIS64, AnalytiX and Hyper Historian. BACnet Certification - GENESIS64 and its Platform Services have been certified by the BACnet Testing Laboratory (BTL) to the highest level of BACnet compliance, known as the B-AWS profile. The GENESIS64 automation suite is the first 64-bit product to achieve this important product listing and having this certification will ensure interoperability with other BACnet certified hardware and products well into the future. High Availability with Redundancy - GENESIS64 has built-in native redundancy and is the industry's easiest HMI/SCADA software to set up and configure. New capabilities help make monitoring of redundant graphics, alarm and historian application servers simple. Automatic and manual redundancy switchover has been improved and the new redundancy optional feature is ideal for large mission critical applications. Few competitors have native redundancy and usually require hardware or massive scripting. New GenDemo, Symbol Library – GENESIS64 contains a completely updated GenDemo for presentation purposes. Explore the new GenDemo and learn all the new features of the GENESIS64 HMI /SCADA product, as well as other new version 10.7 products. Thousands of new and updated time saving 2D and 3D GraphWorX64 symbols are available for instant use and are part of the 10.7 release. The new symbols have been organized to reduce the time it takes to search and deploy them in applications. Other Recently Released Products: Energy AnalytiX version 10.7 provides cost, consumption and carbon dashboards, reports and analysis of any industrial or commercial operation. With this release, many new enhancements have extended the initial release with new advanced historian capabilities. The new integrated historian provides high resolution energy data recording and can also support third-party historians so that previous energy recordings can be automatically merged. Other new features include; improved ease of use, security and calculation roll-ups, as well as new energy and carbon expression calculations. Facility AnalytiX version 10.7 is a predictive Fault Detection and Diagnostics Solution for any commercial and industrial application. The built-in rules-based expression engine helps analyze, detect and predict equipment and efficiency faults. When faults do occur, the system provides a list of monetized probable causes with associated probabilities. MobileHMI version 10.7 utilizes the rich features of the Windows Phone 7 platform and allows mobile workforces to view real-time visualization and HMI screens, assets and monitor alarms from anywhere and at any time. MobileHMI v10.7 now includes support for Windows Phone 7.5, which includes Multi-Tile and Deep Linking support, which allows users to "pin" any of the MobileHMI applications, such as the AlarmWorX64 and GraphWorX64 screens or the Asset Catalog to the Start Screen for convenient one-touch access. Version 10.7 has numerous performance improvements including dynamic local caching and the ability to run in the background. PortalWorX-SP version 10.7 extends the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 collaboration dashboard with a family of real-time infrastructure and visualization Web Parts. It contains over 20 Web Parts, which include powerful graphics visualization, trends/charts, grids, security, reporting, asset navigation and many others. PortalWorX v10.7 integrates with the new ICONICS Commanding capabilities, which substantially reduce engineering development. Based on the latest Microsoft Silverlight version 5 technology, roles-based management, engineering and operation dashboards are secure and easy to create and operate. Hyper Historian version 10.7 is a high-speed, mission critical plant historian. Hyper Historian is designed to log large volumes of data, in excess of 100,000 updates per second, and connects to multiple data sources across the enterprise. Hyper Historian has been improved in the Redundancy and Collector sections by adding OPC HDA Interface support for Redundancy, Performance Calculation Redundancy and Logged File Synchronization. The Collectors now support Datasets as well.

New management portal

The number of users at the online management portal netbiter.net for M2M and Remote Device Management is growing very fast. Due to increasing demands IntelliCom Innovation have introduced several new features to monitor, control and manage remote units in an easy, reliable and cost efficient way.

Some of the new features are;
Extended support for the award winning Netbiter EasyConnect concept that provides true plug’n’play installation of wireless devices, including secure access of firewall protected equipment.

There is now a software API basedon web services like SOAP ayt the site. It makes it possible to interface remote data to business applications, Intranets, web sites etc.

Modbus connectivity has been added on some GPRS and I/O based products.

Alarms are now supported via RSS feeds. The alarm scheduler has also been improved.

Last but not least the report engine has been updated to support more reports and customisation options.