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TRADITION OF QUALITY
TIM Co. was always big enough to handle all tasks successfully and small enough to perform them better than anyone else
ASerbian company, TIM Co. was established in 1993, as a company engaged in servicing of medical equipment. In the year 2000, the company started representing foreign manufacturers of medical equipment and over the years has developed outstanding cooperation with them, including HOLOGIC (USA), KAVO (Germany), CODONICS (USA), PLANILUX (Germany) and BARCO (Belgium). In the second half of 2013, Tim Co. formed a new department which is responsible for the placement of digital X-ray systems for use in various industrial and security applications. TIM Co. has concluded exclusive representation contracts with the companies in the field of industrial (NDT) and security applications. We would like to highlight the very successfully cooperation with the companies which represent the world’s best in the field of security and NDT equipment:
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• ICM Teledyne (Belgium), a leading designer, developer and manufacturer of cutting edge portable
digital X-ray systems. ICM Teledyne produces flat panel-based radiography and X- Ray Generators inspection systems for the security, NDT, science and art.
• YXLON International (Germany), a globally renowned developer that offers a broad range of cutting-edge X-ray and CT products designed to support every need of industrial inspection. The company develops specialized systems for use in aerospace, automotive and electronics industry, for metrology applications and many more. Whether your component is measured in micrometres or metres, there’s an YXLON system that fits.
TIM Co. has been entrusted with many tasks, but it was always big enough to handle them successfully, and small enough to perform them better than anyone else. TIM Co. will continue to serve as a reliable partner of the leading world-renowned producers of industrial and security applications and security and safety equipment, as well as to successfully continue to perform all the tasks and goals ahead.
|ECONOMY | THE STRONGEST ENGINE OF EUROPE
Germany is the world's fourth-largest economy following the United States, China, and Japan. In spite of recent slowdown, Germany has been flourishing over the past 12 years, with robust economic growth and record low unemployment rates
German economic growth slowed last year to its lowest rate in six years as a result of global trade tensions, export weakness and a persistent downturn in the a utomotive industry. The gross domestic product growth rate of 0.6 per cent, is the lowest since 2013’s 0.4 per cent expansion. The 2019 GDP figure marks a sharp decline from a year earlier, when growth reached 1.5 per cent, and 2017, when the German economy expanded 2.5 per cent. German GDP has now risen every year for the past decade — the longest uninterrupt ed period of growth since reunification in 1990, and many economists belie ve that the wheel will soon turn again into positive direction, probably by the year’s end. According to the forecasts, in 2020 the economy will grow about 1 per cent. T his is consistent with the official forecast of the German government which lowered its own growth prediction for 2020 from 1.5 per cent to 1 per cent in October.
Overall, Germany benefits from its membership in the EU and its adoption of the euro . Its strong manufacturing base allows for robust export under competitive prices. In 2016, Germany recorded the highest trade surplus in the world worth $310 billion, making it the biggest capital exporter globally with $1448.17 billion worth of goods and services exported in 2017 . The service sector contributes around 70% of the total GDP, industry 29.1%, and agriculture 0.9%. Exports account for 41% of national output with vehicles, machinery, chemical goods, electronic products, electrical equipment, pharmaceuticals, transport equipment, basic metals, food products, and rubber and plastics are leading industries. As international trade picks up speed, the forces for growth will lend greater momentum to the German economy again next year.
AS THE TIME MAGAZINE RECENTLY POINTED OUT GERMAN COMPANIES HAVE SPECIALIZED IN THE “UNSEXY SIDE OF THE INDUSTRIAL SPECTRUM: NOT SMART PHONES OR IPADS BUT MACHINERY AND OTHER HEAVY EQUIPMENT”
99 percent of all German companies belong to the German "Mittelstand," small and medium-sized enterprises, which are mostly family-owned. Of the world's 2000 largest publicly listed companies meas ured by revenue, the Fortune Global 2000, 53 are headquartered in Germany , with the Top 10 being Allianz, Daimler, Volkswagen, Siemens, BMW, Deutsche Telekom, Bayer, BASF, Munich Re and SAP.
The automotive industry remains the leader in spite of recent slowdown: it posted earnings of 423 billion euros in 2017. As an in novation leader, it is an important contributor to growth and prosperity. Vehicle manufacturing also secures earnings for other s ectors, as it has close links with companies in the chemicals, electrical engineering, steel, metal and textile industries.
German highly specialized industrial companies producing highly specialized goods that constitute the engine of growth in the German economy. Yet companies in other sectors also generate high turnovers. For example, in the healthcare industry (349.8 billion euros in 2017) or in the electrical engineering and electrical industry sector (192 billion euros in 2017). With a broad portfolio of services, these sectors offer a wide variety of employment opportunities.
|ECONOMY | INDUSTRIE 4.0
The revolution underway
The fourth industrial revolution is well underway. You could have easily missed the first three and then join the world at a later date, just like Finland did. But the fourth revolution... If you miss that one, you will be in danger of drowning in poverty. Germany has a plan. That plan is called Industrie 4.0.
WHAT IS THE 4TH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION? But we need to clarify first what are the basics of Industrie 4.0. In no particular order, the economy of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and under its auspices, that is the industry-related part which has been given this catchy term "4.0", will rest on the following - mobile devices, the Internet of Things (Io T) platforms, location discovery technologies, advanced human interfaces Man-Machine, authentication and fraud detection, 3D printing and printers, smart sensors, Big Data analysis and advanced algorithms, multi-level interaction and user profiling. Things will be kept "in the clouds" and interconnectivity, data credibility, decision-making decentralization, and data transparency will permeate e verything.
WHAT DID THE GERMANS COME UP WITH? Features of the German government's Industrie 4.0 strategy are strong product adaptation in highly flexible (mass) production with the necessary a utomation technology being improved by introducing methods of self-optimization, self-configuration, self-di agnosis, cognition and intelligent support for workers in their increasingly complex work. This should build on the combination of innovative management methods already tried in Japan that have given this country a competitive advantage in its own right. Onthe-go solutions are crucial.
As of July 2013, the biggest Industrie 4.0 project has been BMBF's flagship cluster "Ostwestfalen-Lippe Intelligent Technical Systems” (it’s OWL)". The other major project is the RES-COM BMBF, as well as the cluster of excellence "Integrative Production Technolo gy for High-Wage Countries". In 2015, the European Commission launched the international research project Horizon 2020 CREMA (providing rapid production in the cloud
PRODUCTS WILL BE INDIVIDUALIZED, NEW PROFESSIONS WILL EMERGE, OLD ONES WILL DISAPPEAR, RETRAINING WILL BE CARRIED OUT EVERYWHERE, AND THE NEED FOR NEW WORKERS IN GERMANY WILL GROW
based on the XaaS and Cloud model) as a major initiative to facilitate the Industry 4.0 theme. Products and services will become customized and individualized.
WHAT CHANGES ARE LOOMING ON THE HORIZON? What is to come, what we need to overcome in this era and what the German government is gearing up for, is the possibility of social stratification - robotization can reduce the cost of low and middle-class work, so the middle class can potentially be reduced. Retraining measures are needed in order to avoid another Luddite movement and blame technology for everything. As cheap labour will not be needed so much, de veloping countries will not receive as many outsourced manufacturing plants, so many will want to c ome to the EU and Germany, but those who are not qualified will not be needed either. Finally, there will be many occupations that did not exist before, so retraining on-the-go will be necessary (suffice to say that if the profession of driver disappears due to self-driving cars, many things will not be the same). In a world where some people will no longer have the same place as before can lead to anger and shakeup of democracy, and this is one of the challeng es that Germany will face. A new world is coming to us. T his time it's not a new continent but a rapid replacement of technologies, and we may be the last generation to remember both worlds.
|ECONOMY | READY FOR A CHANGE?
The German economy has experienced a significant slowdown in 2019, forcing many reputable analysts to resort to pessimism, especially the liberal British magazine T he Economist, which is traditionally averse to the German economy. The Germans think there is no need to worry. The truth is always somewhere in between.
FIRST HALF: BIG LEAD!! Once upon a time, in pre-EU times (before 1992 and Maastricht), Germany,
Italy and France were the locomotives of continental Europe. Spain was just catching up and all the aforementioned countries h ad a "conservative" Keynesian approach to the economy, with the state playing a strong role of a mediator. The British were ruled by the liberal Margaret and had a completely different approach. And then, in the 1990s, a wave of neoliberalism flooded the whole of continental Europe; the fall of the USSR and Eurosocialism was welcomed in the UK and the US as a sign that “Reaganism” combined with “Thatcherism” was, in fact, the only right path and that there was no longer any need to resort to leftwing agenda. The so-called Third Road was created which involved deregulation and outsourcing. Germany did not fully address this trend and in fact, it didn’t give in to it for the most part.
Others laughed at the German ma chine-building giants which still made expensive factory machines, vehicles and e verything that could be made by Mittelstand, the driving force behind the German economy made up of small and medium-sized enterprises, which, in other capitalist countries, formed the backbone of the economy and the middle class. It was thought that no-one would buy expensive German products when self-sourced products from Asia or Latin America cost less and carried the same brand and logo. But the Germans knew that did not matter. Lo and behold, everyone is still buying German goods, and the Made in Germany brand (paradoxically, forcibly introduced by the British to protect "quality British goods" and the British market from "the poor quality German imports") became a symbol of quality.
Actually, the German goods never ceased to be of good quality. Mittelstand has preserved the German middle class and hundreds of cities with good quality of life and services, while in other coun tries, the middle class has disintegrated and large cities have “chewed up” the outskirts. Germany also survived the World Economic Crisis in a resilient way, becoming Europe’s leader under Angela Merkel, a quiet, down-to -earth, compromise-prone daughter of a Protestant priest with a conservative
vie wpoint and socialist education gained in the GDR. Now, everyone wants to move to Germany - from European experts and ordi nary workers to migrants from the Middle East. 40% of the residents of Stuttgart, the German capital of the automotive industry, were born abroad. Victory?
SECOND HALF: TIME OF CHANGE
But now we are entering the second half, so to speak; a time when things are changing. Now that Germany is a leader with accumulated funds, which should be invested in innovation, it has the best starting position. Only if "the spirit of Wolfgang Schäuble" was not so alive and well, that is the spirit of over-saving. The slowdown of the German economy to less than 1% of GDP growth in 2019 indicates that there has been some saturation - a slowdown in China, further exacerbated by the outbreak of the coronavirus and the market saturated with quality products that last a long time all resulted in a mild crisis. Just as the good old W olfgang was reluctant to help Greece in trouble, his successors are reluctant to invest more but would wait for their resilient conservative measures and austerity funds to mitigate the crisis. But, the time of change has begun.
Green parties want to tax airline flights and fossil fuels. Ecology and green technologies are a big thing now and Greta is young people’ s idol. Germany has always been the one that has provided innovation with a competitive edge: engines, planes, motorways, high-speed trains. Now, it’s Germany’s time to dare to overcome the so -called "The Black Zero" or "Schwarze Null" policy that seeks to maintain a balanced budget and not generate new debt.
Even Macron said that the Germans have a "budget fetish" and that Europe needs incentives to invest in new technologies because China and the US will take over the world. So, the time has come! Germa ny's will to innovate, to realistically see its fa ults, to respect social justice and security of the Bismarck era, and to welcome ne w people to its country by transforming them into new German citizens who contribute to the economy, will make Germany a leader again in the new online, green or any other technologies. All Germany has to do is to “push” itself away from the Black Zero concept. Ready to Change? Genau! Reinvent yourself or bust! I would not put my bet on the latter outcome since it is not German at all.
