More than 12,000 employees, globally active and passionate about innovation — that is the way to achieve both market and technological leadership. We are Körber. Presenting our Group.
Körber is a leading international technology group that has more than 12,000 employees at over 100 locations worldwide. We are the home for entrepreneurs — we turn entrepreneurial thinking into customers success. Körber AG manages the Group and its four Business Areas: Digital, Pharma, Supply Chain and Technologies.
The Körber Insights shows the entire spectrum of the Körber world: We give our view of exciting developments and trends, as well as innovations and technologies. We also highlight personalities who drive Körber forward every day with their entrepreneurial spirit and new ideas.
Wanted: team players. The know-how, creativity, and dedication of our employees have made us a successful technology company in Germany and worldwide. Now we want to shape the future — with you! We offer exciting positions for experts, young professionals, university students, and high school students.
A working climate that promotes innovation, diversity, and the courage to tell uncomfortable truths is more central than ever to a company's success today. In an interview, Gabriele Fanta, Head of Group Human Resources, explains how the new leadership principles at Körber specifically strengthen fruitful collaboration in everyday working life.
Experience report: After graduating in mechatronics and mechanical engineering, Max Döring became a trainee at Körber. Today, he is Technical Product Manager at our Körber Business Area Pharma.
Joint future-proof activities are the foundation of sustainable procurement. Körber, as a globally leading technology group, therefore places great value on the optimal purchasing of materials and services.
Körber’s Business Area Pharma is making the production operations of its customers more digital and thus more flexible. It does this by using smaller batch sizes and minimal delivery times or via networked industrial production processes.
Digital penetration, more and more individualized products and services, and the rapidly increasing significance of data have great potential. As a result, the manufacturing pharmaceutical industry is becoming the trailblazer for a personalized healthcare sector. Mass production is being made flexible.
Using digitization
The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing a transformation. “Pharma 4.0” is the buzzword that sums up the digital advancement of the pharmaceutical industry. It stands for self-learning machines, a networked and more flexible production process, smart data management, and more intuitive forms of interaction between human beings and machines. In many areas, Pharma 4.0 is already a reality. We at Körber are conducting numerous projects to make digitization useful for our customers. The pharmaceutical companies are focusing on two major issues: networked production and ever smaller batch sizes as a result of personalized medicine.
lWith our supply on demand solution we’re already reducing supply chain costs by more than 50 percent for all companies, while maintaining top quality.r
Hans-Peter Süßlack, Business Process Manager at the Körber Business Area Pharma
In particular, the megatrend toward personalized medicine is having concrete and wide-ranging effects on packaging. “We are observing a continuous increase in the demands made on modern packaging systems. The broader range of product variants on offer is increasing the complexity of the production process. At the same time, the security and efficiency of processes are moving into the foreground,” says Dr. Mario Holl, Chief Digital Officer at the Körber Business Area Pharma. “Digital technologies help to meet these requirements.”
Pharmaceutical production: There is a trend toward small batch sizes.
Small batch sizes and short delivery times
In our packaging material area of expertise, we at Körber offer “supply on demand” technology that enables our customers to deliver their products within five days at most, even with very small batch sizes and short order lead times. One of the factors that make this flexibility possible is the creation of direct connections. Our Rondo Solutions link their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system with those of their customers. They also directly connect the digital printer for packaging labels with their customers’ facilities.
“This development is necessary because the market has changed greatly in recent years,” says Hans-Peter Süßlack, Business Process Manager at the Körber Business Area Pharma. In the past, a medication was produced in two or three basic forms. Today the market is much more fragmented because of the trend toward the individualization of medicine. For example, in the past a customer would simply order 250,000 packages of a medication. Today the same customer may order the same number of packages, but these are subdivided into 20, 30 or more different individual orders with batch sizes as small as ten or 20 items.
Automation with “supply on demand”
But it’s not only varied dosages and mixtures of medicines that are changing the sector. In addition, today the legal regulations often vary greatly in the countries where our customers sell their products. These different legal regulations and faster changes in marketing are creating one primary requirement: greater differentiation in the packaging to be printed. The diversity is increasing, because suppliers have to take into account a growing number of language and country versions as well as new requirements for serialization.
The “supply on demand” solution, which integrates the ERP system and, even more importantly, automates work processes, saves costs for the customers. “With this solution we’re already reducing supply chain costs by more than 50 percent for all companies, while maintaining top quality,” says Süßlack. He expects to see further gains in efficiency in the future.
Efficiency improvements are also the focus of the second grand vision of Pharma 4.0: networked production. The production control software Werum PAS-X MES (Manufacturing Execution System) creates the preconditions for completely networked industrial production by means of an interface that quickly and easily integrates machines into the networks of pharmaceutical companies. “For a long time, this integration process was an unproductive task that took a lot of time,” says Klaus Sauermann, Senior Head of Business Development at the Körber Business Area Pharma. “Our plug & produce solution will greatly simplify this process in the future.”
Much like a USB interface, this solution enables a rapid exchange of data between Werum PAS-X and the machines in the customers’ production halls — it basically functions as a translator. “We ensure that the software and the machines speak the same language,” says Sauermann. PAS-X recognizes new machines in the network as relevant entities and provides them with all the data that is important for them, such as quantities and batch numbers.
lWe ensure that the software and the machines speak the same language.r
Klaus Sauermann, Senior Head of Business Development at the Körber Business Area Pharma
An expert on Plug & Produce solutions: Klaus Sauermann, Senior Head of Business Development at the Körber Business Area Pharma.
Plug & produce in Industry 4.0
PAS-X offers many advantages for medication producers. It makes it easier to configure the production network and conduct qualification programs for employees. The likelihood of setup errors is reduced, and less time is required for completing projects. “All in all, it reduces the cost of integrating a new machine by up to 75 percent,” says Sauermann.
The plug & produce solution is open and completely independent of the supplier. Through Werum Solutions, we at Körber are working together with companies and organizations such as the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) to establish it as an industry standard. Says Sauermann, “Plug & produce is extremely important for Industry 4.0. Our interface is the perfect solution for this purpose.”
Insights shows the entire spectrum of Körber, what we do and how we do it: We give our view of exciting developments and trends, as well as innovations and technologies. We also highlight personalities who drive Körber forward every day with their entrepreneurial spirit and new ideas - always to the benefit of our customers. In this section, you’ll find inspiring content concerning our topic Tech.
Körber evolves ecosystem partnership with Microsoft to create more value for customers
To help our customers become more efficient and agile in pharmaceutical production, we transformed our market-leading PAS-X Manufacturing Execution System (MES) offering into a cloud-based solution. The partnership with Microsoft plays a key role here.
Artificial intelligence (AI) provides hackers with new ways to attack organizations. But it also opens up opportunities for companies to better protect themselves against these attacks. Körber is, therefore, investing in AI and advising its customers to follow suit.
Collaboration is key – the power of B2B ecosystems
At a time when new technologies and business models are rapidly entering the market, complexity increases. Interconnected solutions will allow us to realize our full potential in creating customer value.
With its Unified Control System (UCS), Körber introduces an unprecedented software solution for bundling and orchestrating multiple warehouse technologies.
