is there a crisis in automation or do i make a bad presentation?

[cacciatorino]

I write to have an opinion from colleagues.

I've been looking for new customers for some time, but despite the site that seems decent, the linkedin profile pretty well, the ultra-ventennial experience and the dozens of plants designed, I can't exceed the filter of the secretaries of the companies that select as possible customers and who tell me invariably to send the email to info@.... and then the thing dies there, or at the limit I receive the compliments of the office purchases for the nice presentation but then you never get to talk to the technical office and fix an interview.

same thing on linkedin, many contacts but no follow-up.

result similar to the fairs when I visit the stands of the companies of construction of automation plants, apparently alive interest but then no follow-up.

A colleague of mine says he's letting go of self-presentation, because in Italy he's only getting in if there's a common knowledge that guarantees for you.

I have an idea that there is a crisis in the automotive sector and that it is slowly spreading around.

or I also thought that the problem is that the companies are strengthening the internal U.S. to gradually renounce the external ones.

What do you think?

 

[PIETRO2002]

I think that with geopolitical crises around the world, the trust of companies for the future is under the shoes. uncertainty about the transition between endothermic and electric motors, germany in recession, cost of high money limiting investments, waiting for what happens after the European elections, but especially after the American ones. .

 

[DrBarde]

I know that there is a crisis in automation and planting in generis. Also because of the wars in the east of Europe and in the Middle East, at a profoundly unfavourable exchange rate of Middle Eastern money compared to the dollar, investments are blocked. I can see that the situation is anything but rose unfortunately.
At least, that's what I've seen for a 4/5 months now.
even at the level of research as an employee, I see that it is much more stale than just a year ago.

 

[Cla]

Many companies in my opinion tend to "react" internally... with all the consequences of the case

 

[cacciatorino]

Thank you for your contributions. It's just that reading the sites or looking linkedin seems like automation is an area where it never sets the sun, but maybe reality is a little different from social enthusiasm. I'm probably wrong too, but I still can't figure out what and where.

It's the first time in my 30-year career I've been "proactive" in looking for customers, since so far they've always been to find me and always for word-of-mouth, so I probably miss the experience in this particular activity.

 

[DrBarde]

I met professionals who also did a "hybrid", in situations of need.
i.e. they worked as free professionals, but in addition to their historical customers, they had made new customers through some larger design companies and therefore with a larger turnover of customers, looking for senior figures with a certain background.
linkedin the more I find it unrealistic, in the sense that even (no offense) the last wheel of the cart is described "manager responsible of the world".

 

[cacciatorino]

I met professionals who also did a "hybrid", in situations of need.
i.e. they worked as free professionals, but in addition to their historical customers, they had made new customers through some larger design companies and therefore with a larger turnover of customers, looking for senior figures with a certain background.
linkedin the more I find it unrealistic, in the sense that even (no offense) the last wheel of the cart is described "manager responsible of the world".

I've never actually considered engineering companies as potential customers, but maybe it's not a bad idea.

 

[Cla]

according to me linkedin distorts reality ... for example companies that are in bad crisis pretend to nothing on linkedin. in general in the internet and especially in all social media, it tends to show only the beauty, the eye-catching etc... when for a positive thing there are another 100 wrong, but this perhaps is more a psychological speech

 

[biz]

I write to have an opinion from colleagues.

I've been looking for new customers for some time, but despite the site that seems decent, the linkedin profile pretty well, the ultra-ventennial experience and the dozens of plants designed, I can't exceed the filter of the secretaries of the companies that select as possible customers and who tell me invariably to send the email to info@.... and then the thing dies there, or at the limit I receive the compliments of the office purchases for the nice presentation but then you never get to talk to the technical office and fix an interview.

same thing on linkedin, many contacts but no follow-up.

result similar to the fairs when I visit the stands of the companies of construction of automation plants, apparently alive interest but then no follow-up.

A colleague of mine says he's letting go of self-presentation, because in Italy he's only getting in if there's a common knowledge that guarantees for you.

I have an idea that there is a crisis in the automotive sector and that it is slowly spreading around.

or I also thought that the problem is that the companies are strengthening the internal U.S. to gradually renounce the external ones.

What do you think?

Well, I'm just wondering the same thing these days.

 

[gerod]

we also feel the contraction in the design. linkedin I use it little because it seems facebook and I decided that social do not do for us.
are of the idea that is only appearance.
need facts.
the safety part cars, instead, still travels, fortunately!

 

[TETRASTORE]

Since September of last year a slowdown in industrial production is taking place, as well as minor consumption, market saturation and geopolitical events.
I know some companies (automotives, power transmissions and, consequently, third-party processing connected to them) that have now undergone a reduction of orders that also ranges from 20% to 30%. this situation reduces the prospects for investments of companies in new products and new plants but this does not remove that they remain active on other activities; For example, in these cases, companies invest more in the promotion of their products (documentation, marketing, fairs, etc.) but not only, they often sell their production to optimize supply-chain management by intervening also at the design level to achieve a saving both in purchases and in the production and management of spare parts. Usually they also provide investments on a reorganization that will see them in advantage when there will be recovery.
In your specific case, knowledge of your customers can be useful to have information on their needs and possible internal deficiencies that you may compensate, even not strictly related to design and calculations but, for example, related to document management, coding, study of optimization and unification of existing components to reduce the number and/or obtain more efficient solutions or lower production costs.
on this could be possible to set dedicated services integrating them into those already in use.
I agree with the suggestion of @drbarde and an additional possibility could be to collaborate with communication agencies providing them with multimedia content such as animations, renderings, etc. to be used in marketing.
would be preferable to those who already follow your customers of which you already have ready or feasible content with few resources.
I also know some design studies that "pres" their employees to their companies for the duration of a given project or to compensate for the temporary absence of their technician.

I can't pass the filter of the secretaries of the companies that select as possible customers and who invariably tell me to send the email to info@.... and then the thing dies there, or at the limit I receive the compliments of the office purchases for the nice presentation but then you never get to talk to the technical office and fix an interview.

Before the massive advent of the internet, I remember the 3/4-hour river meetings to illustrate my services, meetings convened directly by the owners (of small and medium companies) to which both technical and commercial managers were present and in 95% ended with the acquisition of a verbal order sealed simply by a handshake (also for projects beyond 50k). now many of these companies have been absorbed by industrial groups or, worse, purchased by financial groups; the first have already their referents that prefer their historical suppliers, the second (to increase profits) impose a system of savings that favours the commercial sector but often reduces the field of action of the technical sector.
direct contact allowed us to evaluate the preparation, empathy and charisma of the interlocutor and for this reason a meeting was sufficient to evaluate and approve.
Now no one wants to devote more time to this practice but prefers to use the impersonal practice of e-mail messages which, being in a day often many, inevitably and ingeniously do not read in the virtual basket.
for a technical study, the search for new customers, now requires a longer route even if it uses the latest technologies, calculated and structured according to a logic to which many are not prepared.this article, of which I share most of the indications, can be useful to you; I would also add physical documentation to those responsible for the fields of reference, also found in the linkedin lists, because there are more likely to be consulted later.

 

[meccanicamg]

For now the recession is something that wants us to believe.
plate processing plants, bullet automation and special lines for steel/titanium are selling..... everything for warfare, naval, tanks etc.
is only in the ability to error among the right customers suppliers.
certainly there are companies that use much outside and others that do not want.

 

[cacciatorino]

Since September of last year a slowdown in industrial production is taking place, as well as minor consumption, market saturation and geopolitical events.
I know some companies (automotives, power transmissions and, consequently, third-party processing connected to them) that have now undergone a reduction of orders that also ranges from 20% to 30%. this situation reduces the prospects for investments of companies in new products and new plants but this does not remove that they remain active on other activities; For example, in these cases, companies invest more in the promotion of their products (documentation, marketing, fairs, etc.) but not only, they often sell their production to optimize supply-chain management by intervening also at the design level to achieve a saving both in purchases and in the production and management of spare parts. Usually they also provide investments on a reorganization that will see them in advantage when there will be recovery.
In your specific case, knowledge of your customers can be useful to have information on their needs and possible internal deficiencies that you may compensate, even not strictly related to design and calculations but, for example, related to document management, coding, study of optimization and unification of existing components to reduce the number and/or obtain more efficient solutions or lower production costs.
on this could be possible to set dedicated services integrating them into those already in use.
I agree with the suggestion of @drbarde and an additional possibility could be to collaborate with communication agencies providing them with multimedia content such as animations, renderings, etc. to be used in marketing.
would be preferable to those who already follow your customers of which you already have ready or feasible content with few resources.
I also know some design studies that "pres" their employees to their companies for the duration of a given project or to compensate for the temporary absence of their technician.

Before the massive advent of the internet, I remember the 3/4-hour river meetings to illustrate my services, meetings convened directly by the owners (of small and medium companies) to which both technical and commercial managers were present and in 95% ended with the acquisition of a verbal order sealed simply by a handshake (also for projects beyond 50k). now many of these companies have been absorbed by industrial groups or, worse, purchased by financial groups; the first have already their referents that prefer their historical suppliers, the second (to increase profits) impose a system of savings that favours the commercial sector but often reduces the field of action of the technical sector.
direct contact allowed us to evaluate the preparation, empathy and charisma of the interlocutor and for this reason a meeting was sufficient to evaluate and approve.
Now no one wants to devote more time to this practice but prefers to use the impersonal practice of e-mail messages which, being in a day often many, inevitably and ingeniously do not read in the virtual basket.
for a technical study, the search for new customers, now requires a longer route even if it uses the latest technologies, calculated and structured according to a logic to which many are not prepared.this article, of which I share most of the indications, can be useful to you; I would also add physical documentation to those responsible for the fields of reference, also found in the linkedin lists, because there are more likely to be consulted later.

I take your message to thank you and the other speakers. The article we mention is very interesting, it seems quite complex to put into practice but promising. In fact, I have already done something and the "metries" of linkedin seem to give some fruit, we will see in the coming weeks or months will bring results.

regarding direct contacts these seem to have become really impossible: in front of thirty companies contacted I got only two interviews, both went well, while in other cases I failed to go beyond the phone. It is also true that the visibility "passive", that is obtained by putting me on display through site and profile linkedin for now does not seem to have brought concrete contacts, as far as the visits are there.

rigardo linkedin: It is for my taste a very strange environment, full of knights without stain and fear that they do not miss one and always have great success as a reward of hard work. This side is deprecatable, while the platform is still very useful to find contacts or even companies that did not know each other, and so you can contact them.

about geopolitical contingency: I was sure there would have been a shift in automation production to the war industry, but I didn't think it was already gone. So now I understand where the capitals that previously served to finance the plants for the production of refrigerators or cosmetics are finished.

about the automotive: As much as I did not work there, it is obvious that the design resources that have been released from that sector have also been poured into the field where I operate normally, which therefore has reached a greater degree of saturation.

The picture is not very comforting, let's hope that's true that says that hard times form better people!

 

[TETRASTORE]

The picture is not very comforting, let's hope that's true that says that hard times form better people!

what you mentioned coincides with the first part of the Arab proverb that reads:
"hard times generate strong men, strong men generate happy times.
happy times generate weak men, weak men create hard times."
It is a matter of understanding which of the four stages we are now in.
as a boomer I fear, hoping to be denied, that we already find ourselves at the end of the third phase.

 

[cacciatorino]

what you mentioned coincides with the first part of the Arab proverb that reads:
"hard times generate strong men, strong men generate happy times.
happy times generate weak men, weak men create hard times."
It is a matter of understanding which of the four stages we are now in.
as a boomer I fear, hoping to be denied, that we already find ourselves at the end of the third phase.

Yes, I mentioned only the "motivational" part :roflmao:

 

[TETRASTORE]

another suggestion that I can give you, is to make "network" with other studies (or companies) that have complementary activities to your and not competitors.
I adopted this solution in the twenty-five years in which I created and managed two small companies and it worked very well and it served to eliminate the competition that, although fragmented, is very widespread in my sector.
For example, in my specific case, me and my colleagues from other companies/studies shared the customers by proposing a wide range of diversified services such as: setting and creating websites, institutional videos and products, multi-menial presentations and multimedia totem rental of our design, 3d modeling and rendering, photography, graphics, catalogs creation and turnkey manuals, 3d product configurators, dedicated software, industrial design and design, consulting and broadcast courses and more.
This way aroused the interest of customers as they had few interlocutors who met many of their needs, saving them a lot of time and as regards the billing we agreed on who had to invoice also according to the amount of the order or according to the preferences of the customer.

 

[Kaji]

or I also thought that the problem is that the companies are strengthening the internal U.S. to gradually renounce the external ones.

I have been working in the design office for 7 years and I must say, despite myself, that I see the sector a little in crisis, not so much for the global crisis, but for the general environment.
first of all if firing people becomes and will become easier, then a company can well hire people and then somehow get rid of them somehow after a few months, when they no longer serve, rather than take an outside and pay double if not more and then also attention to manualism, which was still a manna from the sky for design studies, seems to me to decrease; in many cases manuals are seen as "the thing that no one reads" and can come back useful to "pararsi il cul0" (discuss the expression) only in the case of accidents; but also here, without throwing it into politics, with the paper reform and the permissive attitude in general towards those who want to do and does not want impediments from the controls and bureaucracy makes sure that the risk is diminished if things are not done well and it is more natural to do manuals as they come without losing too much time and money, especially for companies not certified iso.
Finally I think that you pay a little the distrustful attitude of some towards "ambigue" figures like the outsiders, especially those of a study, in fact we have access to the secrets (which then what secret there can be in a roller coaster) but it is foreign, for example, I speak of my specific personal case: I have been working at the same company since the end of 2017 initially framed as an intermediate figure since 2019 as a senior and since then I have always dealt with filling machines, which are the most complicated ones that the company produces, while the end line did others, for the last machine in production the president, which is mainly a commercial, made the meeting with the whole technical office plus the technical director except me, and I was assigned only the initial part of the machine that is least inter. However, I am talking about my specific case against one company, I have no experience enough to make a general or statistical speech.

 

[stevie]

some considerations. . .

the automotive sector has been in crisis for years, accomplice the unaware force from the politics (European) in wanting to pass all the field to the electric without realizing that it is pure utopia...the result is that practically all the big builders have pulled the rows in the boat in recent years...if you take care of the current motorizations are often those of 10 years ago with just some electronic modification...in compensation the high productions, accomplices
for the horned and decked series. .

the automations sector, at least in Italy, is saturated, beyondmodo inflazion.
does not spend month that you do not jump out some new company, never seen, to boast decades of experience. . .
we operate in the food plant sector, we save ourselves because we have much of the internal production, otherwise they would be pains.

on the speech trade fairs we have come to the conclusion not to make it anymore...now, at least the Italian ones, they have become a bark full of curious and perditempo, where the one who is has the largest (the stand).

As stated before the winds of war, the various instability, the unfavorable change, are all negative factors.

 

[cacciatorino]

Finally I think that you pay a little the distrustful attitude of some towards "ambigue" figures like the outsiders, especially those of a study, in fact we have access to the secrets (which then what secret there can be in a roller coaster) but it is foreign, for example, I speak of my specific personal case: I have been working at the same company since the end of 2017 initially framed as an intermediate figure since 2019 as a senior and since then I have always dealt with filling machines, which are the most complicated ones that the company produces, while the end line did others, for the last machine in production the president, which is mainly a commercial, made the meeting with the whole technical office plus the technical director except me, and I was assigned only the initial part of the machine that is least inter. However, I am talking about my specific case against one company, I have no experience enough to make a general or statistical speech.

Did the technical direction change? I spent losing clients because the new technical director brought in his former college mates, or friends, who had their own technical studies.

 

[stevie]

For now the recession is something that wants us to believe.
plate processing plants, bullet automation and special lines for steel/titanium are selling..... everything for warfare, naval, tanks etc.
is only in the ability to error among the right customers suppliers.
certainly there are companies that use much outside and others that do not want.

I wouldn't say that. .
There are some areas for which the crisis in my view is structural (automotive first) and for which the solution is not only not easy but it is not said to exist.
other sectors (automations) have a crisis linked to the surplus of supply.
other sectors (machine tools) have benefited in recent years of a huge series of incentives that have drugged the system, it is normal that they now suffer from the decline in sales.

the Italian then is linked to double thread to germany, the situation is very complex there...