On 30 September 2020, the order backlog amounted to €983.7 million (31 Dec 2019: €1,197.4 million) – a production capacity of an average of five months. As at the same date, the group had 6,882 employees, including 287 trainees (31 Dec 2019: 7,245). The number of employees has decreased by 363 when compared with year-end 2019. At the end of the third quarter, 4,333 employees (62%) worked for its domestic companies and 2,549 employees (38%) for its international companies. Personnel expenses decreased to €373.3m (previous year: € 449.5m).
The world economy and the worldwide market for machine tools are in a deep recession, due to the ongoing global spread of the corona virus. For the first time since 2003, the worldwide market for machine tools will decline for two years in succession. In its latest publication in October, the German Machine Tool Builders' Association (VDW) and the British economic research institute Oxford Economics assume that in 2020 global consumption will fall significantly, by -23.2% to €55.1bn (previous year: -8.4%; €71.8bn).
But Christian Thönes, chairman of the Executive Board, said: “DMG Mori is resilient and future-proof. We succeeded in optimising structures and costs during the crisis. We have also achieved a great deal in expanding our future fields – especially automation, digitisation and sustainability. That makes us feel positive. We are raising our forecast for 2020 slightly.”
And so the company is raising its forecast for 2020 sales revenues and earnings slightly, with order intake of around €1.6bn, sales revenues around €1.75bn (previously: around €1.65bn) and EBIT round €75m, compared with around €60m previously.
Believing that Innovation is the only way out of the crisis, DMG Mori is keeping its development budget stable at a high level. Research and development expenses in the first nine months amounted to €49.2m (previous year: €52.0m). This is focused on automation, digitisation, additive manufacturing, DMG Mori Qualified Products (DMQP), as well as sustainability and technology excellence. At the ‘Global Development Summit’, over 500 international experts from the ‘Global One Company’ developed new product ideas digitally for the first time.
On sustainability, since May 2020, DMG Mori has had an equalised CO2 balance (Company Carbon Footprint). From January 2021, the company will also be focusing on green production worldwide: from raw materials to delivery to the customer, all machines along the entire value-added chain will be produced completely CO2-neutral. This makes DMG Mori one of the first industrial companies worldwide to have a climate-neutral product carbon footprint.
Moving to automation, since October the Robo2Go has been available for milling machines. This flexible automation solution can easily be used via CELOS (DMG Mori’s CNC front-end), without any knowledge of robot programming and is ideal for small and medium batch sizes.
The new monoBLOCK Excellence Factory went into operation at the beginning of September. Digitally and fully automated, it can now produce up to 1,000 machine tools per year. The core of the 4,000 m2, highly modern flowline assembly in Pfronten is an automated guided vehicle (AGV) transport system. With this most modern assembly line in the world, DMG Mori says it is setting new standards in the machine tool industry.
As a world premiere, the company recently presented the DMF 200|8 from the new travelling-column series, which can be easily and flexibly automated with the modular PH Cell round pallet storage system.
On digitisation, the new ‘Planning Board’ makes it easier for small and medium-sized companies in particular to get started with digitally optimised production planning. This cloud application has a wide range of assistance functions and an easy-to-use user interface.
