Flender Drives Strategic Edge How Digital Transformation Creates Competitiveness

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Heavy metal meets AI: At Hannover Messe 2025, drive specialist Flender is demonstrating how digital transformation can give mechanical engineering a new competitive edge. CEO Andreas Evertz today presented how the company is shaping the future of industrial production with AI, process automation and intelligent sensor technology.

"Innovation is the competitiveness of tomorrow," Evertz emphasized. "We have to stop seeing change as an obstacle and start seeing it as a driver. That's exactly what we've done at Flender." Flender's digitalization encompasses every phase of the product lifecycle and every process within the organization, Evertz said. From the moment a customer places an order, through design, production, delivery, and service, AI and automation can be found at every step. "We faced the competition head on, looked at all the processes, rethought familiar things and processes. This is how we achieved our current competitive position and are pioneers in digital transformation," says Flender's CEO.
 
With its revolutionary Flender One platform, the company demonstrates how end-to-end digitalization has fundamentally changed the production of customized industrial gears

Individualization through automation

By completely digitizing the engineering process and using AI, Flender has achieved what was previously considered impossible: A fully individualized, customized gearbox that can be configured in just five clicks - "as fast as checking out on Amazon," as Evertz describes it. With over a million possible configurations, the system instantly generates a digital twin and provides 3D CAD data, drastically reducing development time.
 
Most impressively, data analysis showed that industrial gears were previously designed an average of 50% too large. Precise dimensioning with Flender One not only saves material and energy, but also makes Flender's products more attractive in terms of price in global competition, without compromising on quality.
 
A holographic Flender One cube will be on display at the Flender booth to illustrate the company's vision: in the future, competitors' gears can be easily replaced by precisely configured Flender One solutions - customized to the last millimeter.

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Digital intelligence in operations

Every Flender One gear unit comes standard with AIQ, an intelligent sensor system connected to the cloud. This predictive maintenance solution can reduce unplanned downtime by up to 70% and maintenance costs by up to 40%.
 
"In a way, we have become the Google of industrial data," Evertz explains. The collected operational data from all industries enables proactive service and targeted optimization recommendations - often before the customer sees the potential for improvement. A semi-transparent drive exhibit gave visitors a live experience of how AIQ sensor technology works.

Automation as the key to transformation 

90% of Flender One gearboxes are now produced fully automated, compared to just 8% for the previous gearbox generation. This automation takes the pressure off engineers, giving them more time to innovate and evolve.
 
"Our digital transformation is not an end in itself," Evertz emphasized. "It makes our customers faster, more flexible, more efficient and more competitive. And it shows a way for European industry to survive in global competition. But this requires a joint effort from industry, politics and society.