“We look to the past with gratitude and to the future with complete joy”

Pilz is celebrating 75 years in business. How do you feel about this anniversary?

Pilz was founded as a glass-blowing business in 1948, then transformed itself into an automation company, and today is a digitisation company. Can you plan such a development?

Thomas Pilz: It was always a planned, con­scious trans­for­ma­tion – first from glass appa­ratus man­u­fac­turing to relays, then to con­troller man­u­fac­turer – to the dig­ital Safety and Indus­trial Secu­rity experts of today. Change and inno­va­tion are part of our DNA. That’s why we were always able to focus on the chal­lenges and become the com­pany we are today.

Susanne Kun­schert: When our father died unex­pect­edly, our mother con­tinued his entre­pre­neurial legacy. He had written down his vision, his roadmap; that sus­tained the com­pany. Our mother then devel­oped Pilz from an automa­tion com­pany to an automa­tion spe­cialist with Safety as its core com­pe­tency. She has the gift of being able to listen incred­ibly well. To hear the direc­tion cus­tomers want to go in, and pick up on how mate­rials change. She also has an unerring sense of where the future lies. Under her man­age­ment, Pilz has become increas­ingly inter­na­tion­alised.

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“We want to work for one another – everyone together for the cus­tomer.”

Renate Pilz

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In your opinion, what were the key factors for Pilz’s success?

Thomas Pilz: We addressed the issues seri­ously. Once we have iden­ti­fied what to do, imple­men­ta­tion fol­lows directly at Pilz. For example, we iden­ti­fied early on that the engi­neering require­ments laid down by leg­is­la­tion are very dif­fi­cult to imple­ment using con­ven­tional tech­nology. So we acted and, with the world’s first safety relay PNOZ, pro­vided our cus­tomers with a better tech­nology, because it is easier to handle. Our employees play a key part because they are our fellow entre­pre­neurs. They act on behalf of the cus­tomer. That’s why we stand here now as market leaders for func­tional safety, as an automa­tion com­pany, as a partner for engi­neering and for multi­na­tional con­sumer goods man­u­fac­turers. We have devel­oped that together. Because with many things, we just did it.

Susanne Kun­schert: My brother has put it beau­ti­fully. We have this curiosity that drives us on, and the joy of inno­va­tion, com­bined with our con­stant activity. That has car­ried us for­ward. Our resilience, our togeth­er­ness and the values that con­nect us, our busi­ness cul­ture; all of this has brought us to where we are today. Because we are a coura­geous com­pany, and a pow­erful, strong com­pany.

How do you see your automation company at the moment? How is Pilz doing?

What motivates Pilz at the moment?

Thomas Pilz: Pilz is a mature com­pany, part of society and, as ambas­sador for safety, we see it as our respon­si­bility to be part of the solu­tion for automa­tion tasks glob­ally. We are com­mitted to envi­ron­mental pro­tec­tion, we develop new mate­rials. We are helping to shape digi­ti­sa­tion. I’d like to say, to modify a state­ment from Pro­fessor Baldur Kirchner: “To digi­tise others, you first ought to learn to digi­tise your­self”. I think we have achieved this with myPNOZ, the first mod­ular safety relay in batch size 1, with the cor­re­sponding soft­ware tool myPNOZ Cre­ator.

We can see the cur­rent chal­lenge on the market, that there can be no digi­ti­sa­tion without cyber­se­cu­rity, and no cyber­se­cu­rity without a holistic Indus­trial Secu­rity Man­age­ment System. That’s why the triad of Secu­rity, Automa­tion and Safety are quite clearly enshrined at Pilz. Safety is our strength. This comes into its own in automa­tion. Indus­trial Secu­rity pro­tects Safety. The nec­es­sary legal frame­work is cre­ated by cur­rent laws such as the Cyber Resilience Act and the Data Act; the new Machinery Reg­u­la­tion also makes Secu­rity manda­tory from 2027.

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“Safety is our strength. This comes into its own in automa­tion. Indus­trial Secu­rity pro­tects Safety. That’s why the triad of Secu­rity, Automa­tion and Safety are quite clearly enshrined at Pilz.”

Thomas Pilz

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How is Pilz reacting to the challenge of Industrial Security?

Thomas Pilz: We are devel­oping a new core com­pe­tency in our con­sulting offer. We address Indus­trial Secu­rity at the machine.

Susanne Kun­schert: We have been working on the issue of Secu­rity for fif­teen years already. Six years ago, we launched our Secu­ri­ty­Bridge indus­trial fire­wall, because even then we were aware that Safety must also be pro­tected. Our devel­op­ment is also secure. We are con­tin­u­ally working on the issues of Automa­tion and Secu­rity, with Safety as the core com­pe­tency. That’s the beauty of it. We’re standing on such a foun­da­tion because we have always started on these issues at the right time.

We have always cared about envi­ron­mental pro­tec­tion too, because my brother and I have always really embraced nature in our heart. We both feel it is our duty to pass on a good world and a healthy planet to future gen­er­a­tions.

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“Our Chris­tian values are our roots, our foun­da­tion.”

Susanne Kun­schert

The motto for Pilz’s 75th anniversary is also a good fit for the issue of sustainability: “Values. Create. Future”. Why are values still relevant and important today?

Susanne Kun­schert: Our Chris­tian values are our roots, our foun­da­tion. They are expressed in the togeth­er­ness, inter­ac­tion, trust, reli­a­bility and help­ful­ness at Pilz. I have to say, that’s why you really notice the values within the com­pany. They guide us daily. The resulting team spirit enables us to stand strong as we go through crises.

How will Pilz face the future of safe automation?