Cord took over the role on August 1, 2017, replacing former MD Andreas Graf, who left the company by mutual agreement.
Product expansion
He believes "innovation, continuous development and a passion for detail are essential to LoeschPack’s success" and plans to expand the company product range.
“Speed, productivity and efficiency will remain cornerstones of our customers. However, the machinery industry is undergoing fundamental changes with the adoption of highly flexible machine concepts,” he said.
“One of the most important drivers of flexibility is the trend of product customization for our customers. Therefore, LoeschPack will investigate the integration of robot kinematics in the machines. They represent the most flexible machine concept for the production of highly customized products of our customers.”
According to Cord, the entire food and beverage manufacturing sector will gain enormous benefits from advances in automation technology.
Intelligent machines will be more flexible and well-equipped to make customized products with the highest degree of productivity, quality and resource efficiency in small and large quantities.
Factories of the Future
“Factories of the future will be fully automated and we will see production lines that can be easily reconfigured for increasingly diverse products. As a consequence, our customers ask for fully integrated and connected production lines from primary packaging to tray packing,” he added.
“The digital era is also yielding unprecedented machine intelligence. Better machines, with self-diagnosis and self-optimization will continue making production more efficient by letting operators adjust machines faster to optimize machine availability.
“Digitalization represents a logical progression in leveraging IT and communication technologies to turn out goods with improved efficiency.”
Originally from Heidenheim, Germany, the 52-year-old has many years of experience in packaging machinery engineering and automation engineering.
He studied for a degree in IT at the University of Karlsruhe in 1992 and then stayed on to gain a PhD five years later. During this time, his work at the Research Center for Information Technology covered projects relating to robotics and automation in machinery engineering.
In 1998, Cord then became Research & Development division manager at ELAU, a manufacturer of automated machines for the packaging industry. After the company was acquired by Schneider Electric, he was appointed CEO in 2005.
From 2010, he was CEO of the Automation Business Unit at Lenze, which develops and markets automation for various segments of the machinery engineering industry.
“In the next few years, the digital transformation will be one of the main challenges facing medium-sized machinery engineering companies. What it involves is not just the machinery itself but rather the intelligent networking of different processes and systems among users,” he added.