A strong trend in industrial markets is the increasing demands for innovation, high quality and global services. In order to meet these demands, SKF Germany has adopted a strategy to concentrate its engineering knowledge in competence centres situated very close to the industrial
customers.

The SKF teams in these competence centres will be combined with specialists from all five platforms within SKF – seals, bearings and units, lubrication systems, mechatronics and services.

Together with the customers, the teams will create new products and solutions in all industrial areas. The competence centres will be established in the following towns in Germany: Neu-Ulm, Mannheim, Düsseldorf, Leipzig, Hamburg, Hannover and Stuttgart.

The first centre open for business is the Stuttgart Centre, inaugurated in April 2008, which will have a specific responsibility for the machine tool industry, while the other centres will be responsible for all industrial segments in their region.