5. Discuss how HMS can develop its marketing strategies to continue to grow. HMS (Hassbjer MicroSystems), a high-tech company situated in the south-west of Sweden, was founded in 1988 by Nicolas Hassbjer. The company originated from a student project at Halmstad University for measuring paper thickness. Staffan Dahlström, who is the CEO today, was the second person in the company, and he was responsible for the marketing strategies in the company’s first international expansion. The founders of the company realised the need to connect devices to different fieldbuses and industrial networks. Hence, the product “Anybus” was developed – a network card that connects any device to any network. The network card is designed for OEMs and the product is integrated into industrial applications such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), drives, robots, weighscales, valves and controllers.

Already from its inception, the company aimed for a global market, and Hitachi from Japan was one of its first large customers. Other important customers are Siemens, Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric, Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic and ABB.