Hans Beckhoff has received the 2025 German Mechanical Engineering Award at the 15th German Mechanical Engineering Summit held in Berlin. This prestigious award has been presented by the Produktion trade journal since 2006, and honours entrepreneurs who have set standards in machine and system engineering, driven innovation and taken on social responsibility. Beckhoff, founder and managing director of Beckhoff Automation, won this award in recognition of his pioneering entrepreneurial achievements and numerous inventions.
At the summit, top representatives from industry, research and politics came together to discuss industrial policy, the role of Europe, Germany as a business location, and the future of production. The German Mechanical Engineering Award ceremony, which honours entrepreneurs for their life’s work, was the highlight of the first evening.
Hans Beckhoff (right) with Claus Wilk, laudator and Ursula Heller, presenter.
PC-based control lays the foundations for success
Beckhoff’s visionary work was held up as a concrete example that demonstrates how technological progress can be achieved responsibly. He was one of the first to use standard PCs to control machinery and systems to replace proprietary approaches with open, flexible IT-based solutions. Beckhoff launched the first PC-based controller on the market in 1986. Since then, the company has regularly set new technological milestones, including the Lightbus, the first optical industrial fieldbus in 1989, and modular bus terminals six years later that remain the industry standard today. In 2003, Beckhoff created EtherCAT, real-time Ethernet that also became established as a global standard. In 2011, Beckhoff presented the XTS, a multi-mover linear drive system, with the XPlanar planar motor system for intelligent product transport following in 2018. The MX-System is one of the company’s latest technological innovations. It enables control cabinet-free automation of machinery and systems.
TwinCAT control and engineering software is the heart of Beckhoff automation. This standard automation platform provides all the functions of a machine, from sequence and motion control to integrated measurement and analysis, along with motion control for machinery and robots, through to image processing and artificial intelligence.
Contributing to the advancement of mechanical engineering
This combination of hardware and software allows mechanical engineers to build highly optimised production systems that conserve resources. Beckhoff technologies provide the IT world with open interfaces and real-time communication, and integrate edge and cloud services. The Beckhoff approach couples IT and automation, which helps to boost sustainability and efficiency in industrial processes.
“Hans Beckhoff didn’t just deliver a technical innovation with the PC-based control technology concept; he made a critical contribution that paved the way into the digital age for mechanical engineering. Most importantly, his contribution was practical rather than purely theoretical. His concept involves standard hardware, open interfaces and maximum flexibility. This was completely liberating for many mechanical engineers, particularly in the SME sector,” said Claus Wilk, laudator and editor-in-chief of Produktion.
Technology and humanity
The jury was constituted of specialist representatives from science and publishing. They were impressed by Beckhoff’s outstanding entrepreneurial achievements and also praised his commitment to improving society and his philosophy that technology and humanity are not mutually exclusive. Wilk described the company as follows: “Beckhoff is a concept that unites people with technology, with values and with its ethos”.
To this day, Beckhoff’s main priority when managing his company is trust. This has resulted in a culture in which people treat each other as equals: “You haven’t just built a company. You’ve created a space where thinking is encouraged, where ideas are allowed to grow and where people count,” concluded Wilk.
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