Customers
The KION Group’s business model is designed so that customers of all sizes and from all sectors can obtain the full spectrum of material handling products and services from a single source. Customer centricity and a firm focus on customer requirements are also enshrined in the KION Group’s vision of being the best company in the world at understanding its customers’ material handling needs and providing them the right, sustainable solutions.
The KION Group is a global player operating in many customer sectors and enjoys established relationships with its customers. It has been able to extend these relationships through joint development projects and other initiatives. Another important lever is the highly efficient sales organization that ensures the KION Group has the necessary proximity to its customers in all the key markets worldwide. It achieves this both through its own resources and through partnerships. In addition, cross-brand and cross-segment development and sales activities unlock the potential for cross-selling between individual product categories.
The Industrial Trucks & Services segment has a very broadly diversified customer base. Customers range from large key accounts with global operations to small and medium-sized enterprises that typically order just a few trucks each year. This means that the segment is not dependent on key accounts or individual customers.
The Supply Chain Solutions segment benefits from long-standing customer relationships with major players in a range of sectors. They influence the success of the segment’s project and service businesses. Specific solutions help Dematic to further consolidate its position in major customer sectors, including general merchandise, grocery wholesale and retail, apparel, and food and beverage manufacturing.
Following their pandemic-related hiatus, trade fairs and other industry events began to take place physically again in 2022. The KION Group and its brand companies took advantage of the opportunity to maintain relationships with customers and pursuade them of the benefits of its various material flow solutions. The virtual formats and online events continued as well.
At the flagship LogiMAT trade fair in Stuttgart, the KION Group’s brand companies presented a broad range of new intralogistics solutions. Whereas STILL gave practical demonstrations of its ACH series of AMRs, Linde focused on the next generation of electric forklift trucks and fleet management solutions. Baoli was represented by three new industrial truck models, including its new electric hand pallet truck with a lithium-ion battery drive. Dematic unveiled the #Bringiton campaign, through which it is addressing the key challenges facing the intralogistics sector. Linde’s World of Material Handling event returned for the first time in June. The KION Group was represented by its brand companies at various other trade fairs as well, such as CeMAT AUSTRALIA, the Logistics Summit in Hamburg, and ACHEMA, the world’s leading trade show for the process industry. Linde and Dematic also jointly exhibited at the China International Import Expo (CIIE) in Shanghai.
The KION brand companies won further accolades for their product quality and innovation last year. Linde once again collected the ETM Award for ‘Best Brand’ in the industrial trucks category. And readers of trade magazine materialfluss voted the Linde X20 – X35 electric forklift trucks and the Linde logistic train controller (a cloud-based tugger train guidance system) as the best products of 2022 in their respective categories. The electric forklift trucks were also nominated for the Design prize of the German Sustainability Awards (DNP). Dematic was positioned in first place in a ranking of the 20 leading providers of warehouse automation compiled by the ARC Advisory Group.