CECIMO PRESS RELEASE: CECIMO elected new Chairmen to the Committees

11 December 2019

Brussels, 10 December 2019 – On 2019 CECIMO General Assemblies elected Massimo Carboniero as Chairman of the Technical Committee, and Bruno Cathomen as Chairman of the Communication and Advocacy Committee, for a period of two years. Delegates also confirmed Marcus Burton as Chairman of the Economic Committee for another mandate.

As the successor of Mr Juha Makitalo, Dr Massimo Carboniero will lead the CECIMO Technical Committee, which will focus much of its work in the next two years on the future review of the Machinery Directive. Standardisation is another topic high in the agenda of the Committee. According to him, “standards play a strategic role in the uptake of new technologies and the digitisation of industry”. CECIMO is indeed involved in the work of different standardisation committees at European and International level. Sustainability is also another strategic subject in the agenda of the Committee. The aim is to support the sector to become more sustainable by building on existing good practices.

Dr Massimo Carboniero is CEO and co-owner of OMERA - a company leader in the manufacturing sector of metal forming machine tools-, Managing Director of FAIB- a company specialised in hot and cold die manufacturing for the automotive sector-, and Board member of TIMAC - a company producing circle cutting shears, special machine tools and automation systems. He was appointed member of the Board of Directors of UCIMU-SISTEMI PER PRODURRE in 2004 and was Vice-president of the association between September 2008 and June 2016. Since 2016 he is the president of UCIMU. Born in 1959, he graduated in Business Economics at the University Ca’ Foscari in Venice.

Mr Bruno Cathomen will succeed Mr George Blaha as Chairman of the Communication and Advocacy Committee. In his two years term, he promises to look at some issues at stake for the machine tools and related manufacturing industries. According to him, cybersecurity and digitalisation of our industry go hand in hand. This is why cybersecurity is a top priority. Mr Cathomen assured CECIMO’s commitment to support the European Commission and ENISA to build a real “single cybersecurity market”. Nevertheless, we need to ensure that, while doing so, we secure the competitiveness of our industry and that we follow a risk based approach. It means that cybersecurity requirements are associated with the intended use of the product and level of risk. Data flows, better data quality and data management are vital for machine tool businesses. Therefore, CECIMO will follow very closely the work of the European Commission with regard to handling data responsibly. umati is also a priority, as it aims at creating a worldwide standard for the connectivity of machine tools. “We need initiatives like umati”, said Mr Cathomen. “The main benefit is making data processing easier, and, if data are standardized on many machine tool interfaces, the monitoring of these data, for example, is simplified”.

Bruno Cathomen, Swiss citizen, has been CEO of the Mikron Group since 2011. He started his work at Mikron in 2009 and, since then, he is engaged as Swissmem Committee Member of the Swiss Machine Tool Manufacturers. Before joining Mikron, Bruno Cathomen worked for 8 years at the globally operating Finnish Electronics Manufacturing Services provider Elcoteq Network Cooperation, where he held different positions, and previously for 7 years at ABB. He owns a Bachelor degree in Electro Engineering at the Technical University Zürich (ETH) where he got his Master in Management and Technology. He also owns an executive Bachelor of Business Administration from OEKREAL Schools of Business.

Mr Marcus Burton, Non-Executive Director of Yamazaki Mazak UK ltd, has been confirmed for another two years term as Chairman of the Economic Committee. In a time of high uncertainty, his experience will surely guide us in the next EU trade agreements’ talks with other countries. Not only, he will continue monitoring statistics and forecasts for the industry.

CECIMO Chairmen - including Mr Stewart Lane, Corporate Manager of Renishaw PL, who continues chairing CECIMO Additive Manufacturing Committee -, the Board and CECIMO Secretariat ensure that the President of CECIMO, Dr Hans Martin Schneeberger, has a strong and committed team to bring CECIMO to the next level.

About CECIMO
CECIMO is the European Association of the Machine Tool Industries and related Manufacturing Technologies. We bring together 15 national associations of machine tool builders, which represent approximately 1500 industrial enterprises in Europe (EU + EFTA + Turkey), over 80% of which are SMEs. CECIMO covers 98% of the total machine tool production in Europe and about 35% worldwide. It accounts for more than 150,000 employees and a turnover of nearly €27.1 billion in 2018. More than three quarters of CECIMO production is shipped abroad, whereas half of it is exported outside Europe.

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