Could you please assess the year 2020 in terms of the global pandemic, the industry in general, and therefore your company specifically?
The first quarter of 2020 happened as we planned but in the second quarter, we experienced the adverse impacts of the pandemic. The decreased demand in the market caused a climb down in the production numbers and even, disruptions in the supply chain halted production for a short while.

However, thanks to our agile organization, we adapted pretty quickly to the new period. In order to ensure continuity in the supply chain we diversified logistics concepts and adapted our production capacities to the new situation. As the delayed purchasing demand increased when we began to transition to the “new normal” in and after the third quarter, we took measures and we overcame this hard period without problems.

During the pandemic, our priority has been, as always, our employees. We tried to raise awareness about Covid-19 measures among all our employees. We reorganized our working conditions, offices, and common areas to meet the social distancing and necessary hygiene criteria and the departments, if plausible for them, started working from home. Most importantly, we made sure everyone wore their masks properly in the factories and offices at all times. When necessary, our employees worked wearing a shield and protective goggles and with these measures, we minimized the impact of the pandemic on our company. We shared our pandemic measures with our suppliers through the suppliers information platforms and we also benefited from their experience. With our suppliers, we believe we are stronger against the pandemic.

Many companies see 2020 as a year lost in both our country and the world due to the pandemic, whereas we see that the white goods sector picked up the momentum in the second half of the year, thus making up for the losses. Despite all the challenges, we predict that BSH will close 2020 with figures over the planned production numbers.

What are your forecasts for 2021 regarding the changing customer demands, the market volume growth, and production and investment plans?
For the first half of 2021, we see a high demand for white goods. However, as Covid-19 began to reinstate its severe impact, the global economy displays an imbalanced and fragile outlook. We think that this situation might affect demand and since our top export market Europe has intensified pandemic measures and limitations, we might face an uncertainty in exports.

We are transforming our factories to structures where we can carry out flexible and agile methods and develop versatile solutions that comply with the ‘VUCA’ standards. We made improvements where a bottleneck might occur and we make new investments to increase capacity in production lines and on flexibility and optimization.

In 2021, despite probable demand fluctuations, we will strive to achieve figures above those we achieved in 2020.

What kind of a change do you expect to happen in the production and supply processes, and market and demand structures of your company and industry in the medium run? What kind of technologies and products do you consider will prove to be critically essential in the medium run?
Today, as the world is under a great transformation also due to digitalization, BSH Group is also in transformation. Besides being a company that produces and sells electrical home goods, we would like to evolve into a company that offers customized digital function, services and contents. We are establishing our entire strategy on becoming a Hardware+ company. What is important in this digital era is to expand consumers’ comfort zone, to elevate their daily life quality, and to save time for them. Starting from there, we aim to offer our consumers a digital experience with innovative products. Technological advancements that enable us to connect home appliances to internet and our Home Connect products lay the foundations for progress. 

Besides digitalizing our goods for the past two years, we also gave momentum to our Industry 4.0 and artificial intelligence projects regarding our production and supply processes. 2021 will be a year when we actualize our projects.

Today we mostly export to Europe. Considering the high level of satiation in the white goods in Europe in the medium run, we work on diversifying our export market. At this point, developing products especially for the African market is important.  

BSH is also aware how important it is to create a positive effect on the world for both our company and for future generations. For this reason, we strive to make the planet and human life better through our operations. As a company that produces technology, we aim to bring value to the environment. Regarding, we take guidance from the United Nations Burada Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and we carry out necessary improvements by both developing eco-friendly products with high energy efficiency and by decreasing the use of electricity and water and the generation of waste in our production processes.