3 questions to Christian Dummler, CFO at Zeppelin Konzern
1. Zeppelin GmbH offers both products and services related to construction and agricultural machinery, from rental and construction logistics to drive and energy to engineering and plant construction. That is an enormous range. Is there an area that works well without digitization - and an area that cannot exist without digitization?
CD: A very good question! The construction industry in Central Europe is generally not considered to be digitized to any great extent and productivity can still be expanded significantly. Today we offer our customers a wide range of digital solutions, from fleet management, machine management, online spare parts offers to online rentals and a fleet operation center for cruise ships and CHPs. Today there is no area without digitization and some offers are only due to digitization, such as for example our digital marketplace for renting and leasing equipment "Klickrent" or our manufacturer-independent spare parts portal Klickparts.
2. What do Zeppelin GmbH customers get from digitization?
CD: Value-added services and the highest possible machine availability as well as digital planning tools for construction sites as well as a significantly faster, easier and thus more effective interaction with us. In addition, we offer building digital terrain models including drone flights to make earthmoving and mining of raw materials as effective and precise as possible, to name just a few examples.
3. If you had a wish for Zeppelin GmbH in the field of digitization - what would it be?
CD: I have several wishes. I would like to have a bold policy with a clear digitalization master plan that quickly creates the necessary infrastructure (including keyword 5G) and ensure that digital innovations in construction are promoted, e.g. through specifications in tenders and tax regulations. I’d like to reduce bureaucracy in Germany through digitization. And when I think of our internal processes, I would like all non-value-adding activities in the company automated. I am expressly not concerned with reducing costs, but with increasing the attractiveness of work tasks in our company and mitigating the consequences of demographic change.
About Christian Dummler
Managing Director, CFO at the Zeppelin Group
Responsible for controlling, finance, real estate management, law and corporate social responsibility
Strategic business unit: Power Systems
Education: bank officer
- 2003: Joined Zeppelin as commercial manager of MVS Zeppelin GmbH & Co. KG
- 2005: Commercial director of MVS Zeppelin GmbH Co. KG
- 2007: Managing Director of Zeppelin Baumaschinen GmbH
- 2009-2010: additionally Managing Director of Zeppelin Rental GmbH and Head of the Strategic Business Unit Rental
- 2011: Managing Director at Zeppelin GmbH
About the Zeppelin Group
The company consists of a management holding company and six business units, expanded by the Strategic Management Center Zeppelin Digit. In the latter, competencies and resources of IT and digitization are combined. The legal seat of the company is in Friedrichshafen. The head office is in Garching near Munich.
The business units:
- Construction Equipment Central Europe
- Construction Equipment Eurasia
- Construction Equipment Nordics
- Power Systems
- Rental
- Plant Engineering
Zeppelin in numbers for 2018:
- 8502 employees at 200 locations
- 2.9 billion euros in sales, generated in 34 countries
- Total investment volume 279 million euros