New President at Universal Robots

Following their recent (2015) acquisition of Universal Robots A/S of Denmark for US $285m, Teradyne Inc has announced the appointment of a new President to steer the company’s future, leading the growing market for collaborative robots (Cobots). They have named Jürgen von Hollen as President with immediate effect. Von Hollen was most recently the Executive President of the Engineering Solutions Division of Bilfinger SE, which includes their Automation and Controls business in Mannheim, Germany: they are a leading international engineering and services company. In his rôle at Bilfinger, he was responsible for a global staff of nearly 10,000 and annual sales in excess of Euro1billion.

“We’re delighted to have Jürgen leading Universal Robots through this period of explosive growth,” said Teradyne CEO Mark Jagiela. “Jürgen’s experience developing and leading global teams serving a broad range of industrial and commercial customers is tremendously important as we drive the adoption of easy to use, safe, and economical UR Cobots across the globe.”

“I am excited to join Universal Robots as they work to fundamentally reshape automation across the global economy,” said von Hollen. “The opportunity to lead and expand a high powered organization like UR with such a long term, high growth outlook is very rare and I look forward to working with our worldwide distributors, partners, and customers in the days ahead to realize the full potential of collaborative robots.”

Von Hollen began his career with Daimler-Benz aerospace and held senior management roles at Daimler-Chrysler Services, Deutsche Telecom and Pentair. He will now be based in Odense, Denmark.

Background to UR

Universal Robots is the result of many years of intensive research at Denmark’s successful robot cluster, which is located in Odense, Denmark. The company was co-founded in 2005 by the company’s CTO, Esben Østergaard, who wanted to make robot technology accessible to all by developing small, user-friendly, reasonably priced, flexible industrial robots that are safe to work with and on their own can be used to streamline processes in the industry.

The product portfolio includes the three collaborative robots UR3, UR5 and UR10 named after their payload in kilos. Since the first UR robot launched in December 2008, the company has experienced considerable growth with the user-friendly robots now sold in more than 50 countries worldwide. At just 195 days, the average payback period for UR robots is the fastest in the industry.

The company, now a part of Boston-based Teradyne Inc, is headquartered in Odense and has subsidiaries and regional offices in the USA, Spain, Germany, Singapore, Czech Republic, India, and China. Universal Robots has more than 300 employees worldwide.

Teradyne Inc

Listed on the NYSE, Teradyne is a leading supplier of automation equipment for test and industrial applications. Teradyne Automatic Test Equipment (ATE) is used to test semiconductors, wireless products, data storage and complex electronic systems, which serve consumer, communications, industrial and government customers. Industrial Automation products include Collaborative Robots used by global manufacturing and light industrial customers to improve quality and increase manufacturing efficiency. In 2015, Teradyne had revenue of $1.64 billion and currently employs approximately 4,200 people worldwide.