CUSTOMISED DISPLAY SOLUTIONS ARE PRODUCED IN ACCORDANCE
WITH THE TECHNOLOGICAL AND DESIGN REQUIREMENTS OF OEMs
46 iVTInternational.com June 2020
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ABOVE: Albert Zahalka, president Topcon Electronics,
personally produced the 100,000th display of the
financial year
BELOW: Thilo Nagel (left) shows the Mayor of
Geisenheim, Christian Aßmann, the new robotsupported,
partially automated production line which
is due to launch in June
TOPCON
Topcon broke its own record a month
before the end of the financial year, with its
100,000th display to leave the company inside
12 months, a doubling of output in just four years.
“In the early 1990s, hardly anyone could
imagine what monitors in tractors could be used
for,” says Thilo Nagel, general manager at Topcon
Electronics. “Today they are an important interface
for operating increasingly complex machines.”
A rich history
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
agriculture 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 eight-yearold
grandson, who would sometimes join his
grandfather, had to also be able to sit on it
without breaking it”.
The innovative manufacturer from Geisenheim
in Germany solved the tricky task, and the first
fully functional and equally robust display for
a processing machine was born. Word about the
new Topcon displays spread around among the
OEMs. Today Topcon Electronics produces displays
for machine manufacturers from all over the world.
Recipe for success
According to Nagel, Topcon Electronics’
success is due to the fact that, “our displays are
a blank page, so to speak, 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 for everything that has wheels and
chains, and is typically not intended for passenger
transportation.”
Each display that leaves the production facility
in Geisenheim is individually tailored to the
customer’s needs – something hard to achieve
for competitors who use serial production for
large quantities. Since 2011, Topcon has been
systematically developing a programme in which
modularity is the magic word – giving a multitude
of different displays that can be traced back to just
20 product families.
The same yet different
“In the OPUS family alone there are 65 different
solutions,” says Nagel. All displays in a family have
the same technological core. However, the display
size, outer shape, colour, processor, operating
system, number of buttons and ultimately the
brand of the manufacturers, differ. “We solve
everything that is technically solvable”.
These customised 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 because
our display production must run in line with the
machine production process,” says Mathias Kühn,
director operations Europe. iVT
Author: Karen Dörflinger, consultant, Topcon
A dazzling display
/iVTInternational.com
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