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This year saw the 12th Annual General Meeting of the Styrian Service Cluster take place – many thanks to our host and master of ceremonies Bernd Gatter, who gave us the opportunity to hold this important meeting at Siemens Mobility in Graz. This year’s first Best Practice Day on the topic of “From Heavy Metal to Railway Metaverse” was held as an introduction. After the impressive factory tour, there were interesting presentations and discussions about the increasing challenges in the mobility industry and the use of new, innovative technologies, among other things.

At the subsequent Annual General Meeting, we looked back on the year 2023, elected a new association board and discussed the future of the Styrian Service Cluster. Many projects and events will characterise and drive the further development of the association in the coming months. We are excited to see what awaits us – but one thing is clear: We keep on servicing!

Our 25th member of the Styrian Service Cluster has been setting new standards in the field of image processing solutions in the food industry for 10 years. Highly innovative technology is used to classify and sort foods such as potatoes, nuts and much more in order to increase food safety, make production processes as efficient as possible and reduce food waste. With the headquarters in Kirchberg an der Raab, we are now enriched by an internationally active manufacturer of automation systems that emphasises individual and personal service. Welcome Marc Fandl, we are very happy about the new addition and look forward to an exciting future with you!

Keep on growing! We are delighted to welcome another member to the Styrian Service Cluster at the start of the new year: NTT DATA DACH enriches us as an experienced IT services provider that has been advising and supporting companies in Austria in transformation processes for over 20 years. As part of the NTT Group headquartered in Tokyo, the company combines global presence with local brand knowledge and offers customised services – from strategic consulting and system development to outsourcing. Welcome Anna Oyrer, we look forward to many exciting projects with you!

We took a look into the future: under the motto “AI meets Service”, the annual event of the Styrian Service Cluster took place at Kunsthaus Graz on Wednesday, 29 November 2023. Mario Herger, Technology Trend Researcher from SiliconValley, gave the participants a spectacular insight into our near future with artificial intelligence in his keynote speech – this contributed to plenty of potential for discussion in the subsequent World Cafés led by Walter Ochensberger and Christoph Maier. The participants in the panel discussion also provided very valuable insights into their professional environment and discussed topics such as: In which areas will AI replace human workers in the future? How can AI be meaningfully integrated into everyday working life? In addition, the Know Center of Graz University of Technology wowed the audience with their AI robot TIAGo and their robo-dog Sharky. The latter was allowed to assist on stage during the crowning surprise performance by young cabaret artist Elli Bauer.

We would like to thank all contributors and partners for their active support and are very excited to see how AI will change our lives in the future!

Many thanks to: Mario Fraiß-Kollmanitsch, Birgit Phillips, Walburga Fröhlich, Karin Hofmann, Alexander Stoik, Jens Poggenburg, Lorenz Rebernik, Manfred Fuchs, Patrick Siebert, Manuel Muhr, Stadt Graz, Pankl racing systems AG, KNAPP AG, Andritz AG, Fraiss IT GmbH, FH JOANNEUM GmbH, PIDAS Österreich GmbH, INKOMMUNIKATION, AVL List GmbH, Capito – CFS GmbH, Seabird Marketing

Looking for best practice examples? In November, the time had come again: our member company EVG GmbH opened its doors as the host of our Best Practice Day event series. Alexander Krobath and Christoph Herk introduced us to the world of wire processing and mesh production. Under the topic “Service-centric IoT platform in mechanical engineering”, the participants learned how a traditional family business has internalised the world of service and digitalisation in recent years. The event concluded with a very impressive factory tour, during which it was even possible to observe a newly built machine in a test run.

We would like to thank EVG GmbH for the organisation and for the interesting insights!

Spotlight on Andritz AG. As part of our Best Practice Days event series, the members of the Styrian Service Cluster were offered deep insights into the service world as well as an exciting exchange of experiences according to the motto “Where Digitalization meets Service”.

Not only an interesting plant tour which reflected the diversity of Andritz, was offered, but also the different service units and their requirements were presented. Furthermore, the company provided intensive insights into the digitalisation initiatives in service and their strategic orientation. Of course, there was also enough room for the members to exchange ideas on the topics of digitalisation and service. In conclusion, we want to thank Karl Eickhoff for hosting this exciting best practice day!

As a result of a master’s thesis at the Institute of Marketing at the Karl Franzens University in Graz, a selected group of experts from our SSC member companies recently met at the KNAPP headquarters to exchange ideas in a focus group discussion about empathy in service.

First of all, the change in empathic behaviour during the Corona pandemic was explained, and it came out strongly that due to the countless new communication channels, it is becoming more and more important to put oneself in the other person’s shoes. The main outcome of the discussion was the realisation that empathy is channel-independent, but context- and situation-dependent. Not every person is equally sensitive, but regardless of the communication channel used, empathy should always be shown to the other person.

Among other things, there was also an exchange about how the companies themselves deal with empathy. Is it lived, learned or already present in the companies? On the one hand, some companies focus on this factor during the hiring process, while on the other hand some companies prefer to transport empathy through the corporate culture

Exciting insights were also gained in dealing with the topic of artificial intelligence and chatbots. These chatbots can already be “fed” with certain personas, as a result of that, it recognises at which point during the interaction with the customer it is better to hand over the communication to a real person. In addition, the behaviour of the chatbot is adapted to the character traits of the counterpart, which means that excellent communication is guaranteed because of the personas defined in advance. This relieves the support team, for example.

Our conclusion: The empathy factor is an essential part of service and will become increasingly important in the future. Many thanks to all participants for the exciting and informative afternoon. The SSC is already looking forward to a follow-up meeting!

The next round of our event-series Best Practice Days. This time we were invited to AVL List GmbH. According to the motto “Reimagining Motion. Cope with change by driving change”, there was a keynote speech, a company tour and in addition there was also plenty of room for an extensive group discussion with the realisation that service will provide the input for development in the future.

A big thank you at this point to Walter Ochensberger for the wonderful organisation of this day. As well as a thank you to our deputy chairman and managing director of AVL Jens Poggenburg for the reception and Christoph Papst for the interesting keynote and company tour.

Year after year! At our 11th General Assembly on Tuesday, 07 March there was a lot on the agenda.

We were particularly pleased to be guests at the premises of our newest member Pankl Racing Systems AG. At this point we would like to thank Bernd Kögler for hosting us, the extremely interesting factory tour and the subsequent company presentation.

In addition to a review, our general meeting also focused on the future: it is clear that the Styrian Service Cluster will continue to work on projects and already proven formats this year. We are looking forward to the year 2023, to new challenges and to pushing the topic of service further.

 

 

Right at the beginning of the new year, we warmly welcome another member at the Styrian Service Cluster. An innovative Styrian partner that stands for high speed, high tech & high technology is going to accompany our cluster from now on. We are very pleased to welcome Pankl Racing Systems AG, a global niche market leader in the racing, luxury car and aviation industry located in Kapfenberg. Welcome, dear Bernd Kögler, we are looking forward to your expertise, interesting projects and a close cooperation!