Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/609948
50 SMT Magazine • December 2015 engineering societies like Association of Ger- man Engineers). I think for Productronics, it's pretty impor- tant to have international connections. There is a strong collaboration with SEMI. I'm even sitting on their board there. We've been col- laborating with SEMI since the foundation of Productronics in 1983. It's fruitful because they come in as an international organization most- ly focusing on semiconductors with a European branch. We come directly from the other side. We are a strong national industry association. The collaboration with IPC or SMTA is not as close, but we also have connections there and conduct talks between both sides. On top of that, we also have collaborations with trade fair organizers and many research institutes. It's a whole ecosystem. Las Marias: can you tell us how you assist your members in dealing with government agencies? Maiser: That's one of our pillars. Usually that's also twofold, the government coming to us and asking what the needs of the industry are; and the other way around—members coming to us and saying, 'Look, government should do something. Help us.' We are the match- maker between the two. There are certain rules you have to obey and not all the wishes of the members can be directly translated into govern- ment action. We are very active in the German ministries obviously. We also have a European office in Brussels. VDMA is a known organiza- tion there, so politicians often ask us when they want to know something about the industry. For Productronics, this is very important be- cause we don't only have this background on the electronics manufacturing equipment, but also on the manufacturing equipment industry as a whole. We always can say, 'Okay, the bench- mark for the machinery industry in Germany is this and that.' Electronics production equip- ment is no different than that. The export ratio is high throughout the whole industry—75% for the German machinery industry. Of course it's higher for the electronics production. Then politicians understand that if they call for fabs in Europe, we say, 'Fabs in Europe are very important and of course it's very good to work together on the same continent. However, we have to be fit for export. We have to export. We can only sell 25% in Europe, so we have to go to Asia. We have to go to the U.S. We have to do business there. How can you help us with that?' This is not always in people's minds or in the minds of the public. They believe a com- pany producing in Germany is basically also selling in Germany. This is our job to tell them, 'Look, the outside world, global business, is a lot more important than local business.' Las Marias: dr. maiser, can you highlight some of your most successful programs and why they are successful? Maiser: The most successful programs are prob- ably those spin-offs because they came at exact- ly the right time. The very successful one is the photovoltaics part because German machine makers still have 50% of the world market for photovoltaics machines. Although there is, of course, always in people's minds, that the pho- tovoltaics production in Germany went down by a lot, but we are very successful on the world market. For us, it's important that we sell ma- chines regardless of where. Right now a very hot topic in discussion with the politicians is battery manufacturing. This is very nice for us because there are lessons learned in other related industries like electron- ics, semiconductors and PV, that you can direct- ly apply to battery production. This makes it easy for us to tell people, 'Look, what we've done in the PV industry worked, so let's do that for battery.' People are VDmA ProDUcTronIcS FeATure inTerview workshop with machine makers and customers.