Remote laser welding technology company Blackbird Robotersysteme is positioning itself for further international growth.
Effective September 1, 2017, the addition of Karl Christian Messer to the executive board temporarily enlarges it to four persons. After an extensive transition phase, co-founder and current CEO Dr. Wolfgang Vogl will exit the company at year end to establish a start-up in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) environment.
For Blackbird Robotics, this step underscores the company’s successful transformation into a solid, mid-size SCANLAB Group enterprise, whose growth trajectory can be successfully pursued even independent of its founders.
Since 2008, Blackbird Robotics has stood for intelligent system solutions in the robot-assisted laser welding field. Its internally developed control technology and user software are combined with scan systems of affiliated company SCANLAB to create top-performing welding systems.
The product range consistently focuses on requirements of customers in the automotive branch and other industrial sectors, while offering increasingly highly integrated system solutions. A laser welding system with OCT (optical coherence tomography) technology for integrated seam tracking and process monitoring, newly introduced just this June, is proof of the company’s strategic advancement to system supplier. And international growth, particularly in the target markets of Asia and the USA, should be further accelerated.
This emphasis on growth in these key markets is not only on a strong automotive sector position, but also new laser welding application areas such as in the construction machinery industry and household appliance manufacturing.
The right management team is key to achieving such ambitious growth-phase goals. Hence company founder Dr. Wolfgang Vogl, whose heart beats to the challenges of start-ups, will be passing the baton in coming months to an experienced entrepreneur and pragmatic company helmsman. Starting in 2018, Vogl begins a new entrepreneurial journey involving networked sensor technology and is already examining collaborative possibilities with various companies of the SCANLAB Group.