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

“In the early 1990s, hardly anyone could imagine what monitors could be used for in excavators,” recalls Thilo Nagel, General Manager at Topcon Electronics. "Today they are an important interface for operating the increasingly complex machines." The Topcon team has been excited and kept an 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 that will leave our company this year. To celebrate the day and as a thank you for this great team effort, we have an employee lunch for our 160 employees today, ”says a delighted Nagel.

Topcon Electronics developed the first control unit for a work machine 25 years ago

Topcon Electronics, formerly known as Wachendorff Elektronik, has been part of the Topcon Positioning Group since the end of 2014. The proximity to technological solutions for the construction industry has been evident in the formerly medium-sized company since 1995. "Fendt had such a crazy idea of a display that should be installed in a tractor," said Nagel. “Until now, displays were only known from industry. But this should be mobile, withstand shocks and temperature fluctuations, the driver should be able to hold onto it when climbing the tractor and the 8-year-old grandson, who sometimes drives out with his grandfather, should 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 work machine was born. The word has spread around the topcon displays among OEMs. Today Topcon Electronics produces displays for machine manufacturers from all over the world.

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

The unique thing about performance - and therefore Topcon Electronics' recipe for success, is that "our displays are a blank slate, 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 play their own software on our displays and offer their customers an individual graphic interface for operating the machine. "Our core competence is to provide manufacturers of everything that has wheels and chains and typically does not move for the transport of people on the road, a freely programmable system."

Every display that leaves the production hall in Geisenheim is therefore individually tailored to the customer. Actually not a good prerequisite for series production and large quantities. However, Topcon has been systematically developing the program since 2011. Modularity is the magic word with which the multitude of different displays can be traced back to just twenty product families. "65 different solutions have currently emerged from the OPUS family alone," explains Thilo Nagel. The technological core is the same for all displays in a family. Display size, outer shape, color, processor, operating system, the number of buttons and ultimately the brand of the manufacturers differ, however. "We solve everything that is technically solvable."

These individually tailored components are usually delivered directly to the OEM's production line in fixed periods and mostly two-digit lot sizes. "This is a big responsibility for us," reports Mathias Kühn, Director Operations Europe, "because our display production must run in accordance with the production process of the machines."

The future firmly in sight

However, Topcon Electronics does not want to rest on the production of 100,000 displays per year. The first robot-supported, partially automated production line is currently being installed and will go online in March. With this additional capacity, the company wants to double or even triple its output again in the next four years at the latest. So much drive needs space. The manager proudly points to a hill that is visible from his window. “This is where the new Geisenheim industrial area is being built. We will move in 2023. We have space on 17,000 square meters to successfully expand further. ”