Following the $215 million acquisition of Demag by Tadao, the mobile crane business is now a subsidiary of Tadano Group, named Tadano Demag GmbH.
Tadano has maintained the Demag name as a stand-alone brand, adding the models to its existing product line. Combining the Tadano and Demag products has filled in gaps in the existing all-terrain line and added lattice boom crawler cranes to the Tadano family. Demag’s city, all terrain and lattice boom crawler cranes offer capacities from 45t to 3,200t (50 to 3,520 USt) for infrastructure, renewable energy, building and heavy civil construction, utilities, and refining applications.
Features of Demag cranes such as sideway superlift, boom booster, fall protection, IC-1 remote, and IC-1 plus technologies contribute to machine performance, safety and efficiency. As a result, Tadano is able to offer a significantly broader and more complete range of lifting equipment solutions for its customers, opening the door to increased flexibility in offering larger equipment package deals.
Kenichi Sawada, CEO of Tadano Faun GmbH, which was created in 1990 by the takeover of Faun GmbH by Tadano Ltd, said: “As we continue to move forward with this large undertaking of integrating the Demag mobile crane business into the Tadano family, we do so while keeping our focus and commitment to our customers and their lifting needs. Continuing to sell and service both the Tadano and Demag brands allows us to leverage synergies across both companies in order to create more value for our customers.”
Tadano Faun GmbH has a 160,000m2 plant in Lauf an der Pegnitz, Germany, where all-terrain cranes and truck-mounted cranes are developed and manufactured. The site also includes a spare parts store and a training center. The acquisition of Demag included its manufacturing facilities in Zweibrucken, Germany.
The Tadano Demag plant in Zweibrücken (Dinglerstraße), Germany.
The Tadano Demag plant in Zweibrücken (Wallerscheid), Germany.
Tadano has formed cross company teams that consist of team members from around the world whose mission is to uncover the best practices that can be shared by the entire Tadano Group.
Jens Ennen, CEO of Tadano Demag GmbH, said: “The Demag integration allows Tadano to infuse the best designs and technologies from both brands across the entire Tadano product offering, so the company can better serve its customer now and into the future.”
To foster a deeper level of collaboration between team members in its European operations, Tadano recently announced the planned formation of a parent company to function as the link between the German manufacturing facilities. The new parent company will operate with joint functions among departments like engineering, product management, sales and marketing. Reducing overlap and increasing efficiency, these joint functions will support the two manufacturing facilities, harness the vast experience of team members and fully develop synergies between the two operations, enabling the company to be more responsive to customer needs.
Throughout the acquisition and integration of the Demag mobile crane business, Tadano has made it a priority to provide the same, if not better, customer experience as it did before the merger. A combined German parts organization promises to capitalize synergies between the German Tadano Faun and Tadano Demag factories with the goal of further advancing parts availability and support capabilities globally.
Initial steps taken to blend the European service organizations are improving the company’s global service capabilities, resulting in faster response time to customers. Service team members are being cross trained on both brands, increasing the number of service technicians available to help to increase crane uptime. The company is also leveraging technology advancements through implementation of remote diagnostics to help improve machine uptime availability.
Region by region, Tadano is taking a measured approach to refine the Tadano and Demag sales and distribution networks. This will give Tadano and Demag the opportunity to jointly develop new markets and assist with global expansion efforts. It will also allow Tadano customers to package their equipment purchases from a single source, enhancing customer service, delivering faster response times and making Tadano easier to do business with.
Tadano is significantly investing in both German manufacturing facilities to increase machine production.
Jens Ennen said: “We are learning from each other and working together to build and strengthen our manufacturing experience and knowledge. This will help us decrease machine throughput times and deliver cranes faster to our customers. This effort is key to reaching our goal of becoming the leading global lifting equipment supplier.”
