Topcon Electronics GmbH & Co. KG brakes his self-imposed barrier at the end of the financial year 2019/2020: the 100,000th display of the year is completed. This doubling of the output within just four years was celebrated at the company's headquarter in Geisenheim, Hesse at the end of February 2020.

“In the early 1990s, hardly anyone could imagine what monitors in excavators could be used for,” recalls Thilo Nagel, General Manager at Topcon Electronics. “Today they are an important interface for operating the increasingly complex machines.” The Topcon team was very excited and kept a close eye on its output curve in the past few weeks. The company broke its own benchmark a month before the end of the financial year. “Albert Zahalka, the President of Topcon Electronics and Topcon Europe Positioning BV, is now turning the last screws into the 100,000th display which will leave our company this year. To celebrate the day and as a thank you for this great team effort, there is an employee-lunch for our 160 employees today,” says Nagel delightfully.

Topcon Electronics developed the first driven machine control unit 25 years ago

Topcon Electronics, formerly known as Wachendorff Elektronik, has been part of the Topcon Positioning Group since 2014. However, the proximity to technological solutions for the construction industry has been apparent in the formerly medium-sized company since 1995. “Fendt had such a crazy idea of a display that should be installed in a tractor”, says Nagel. “Up to this point, such displays were only known in the industrial sector. But this had to be mobile and to withstand shocks and temperature fluctuations, also the driver had to be able to hold onto it when climbing on the tractor and his 8-year-old grandson, who would sometimes join his grandfather, had to also be able to sit on it without breaking it”. The innovative manufacturer from Geisenheim solved the tricky task - and the first fully functional and equally robust display for a processing machine was born. The word about the new Topcon displays has spread around among the OEMs. Today Topcon Electronics produces displays for machine manufacturers from all over the world.

Today Topcon displays are being installed in machines all over the world

The unique thing about the performance - and therefore Topcon Electronics' recipe for success, is that “our displays are a blank page, so to speak”, says the General Manager, “a component that we design and produce in accordance with the technological and design requirements of the machine manufacturer.” OEMs install their own software on Topcon’s displays and thus offer their customers an individual graphic interface for operating the machine. “Our core competence is to provide a freely programmable system to manufacturers of everything that has wheels and chains and is typically not intended for passenger transportation. ”

Every display that leaves the production facility in Geisenheim is therefore individually tailored to every customer’s needs. Not really a good prerequisite for serial production and large quantities. Since 2011, Topcon has been systematically developing the program. Modularity is the magic word with which the multitude of different displays can be traced back to just twenty product families. “In the OPUS family alone there are 65 different solutions”, explains Thilo Nagel. All displays in a family have the same technological core. However, the display size, outer shape, color, processor, operating system, the number of buttons and ultimately the brand of the manufacturers differ. “We solve everything that is technically solvable”.

These customized components are usually being delivered directly to the OEM's production line in fixed periods and mostly two-digit batch sizes. “This is a huge responsibility for us”, reports Mathias Kühn, Director Operations Europe, “because our display production must run in line with the machine production process."

The future firmly in sight

Topcon Electronics does not want to rest on the success of the production of 100,000 displays per year. The first robot-supported, partially automated production line is currently being installed and will be launched in March. With this additional capacity the company plans to double or even triple its output again in the next four years at the latest.