Day 3:
The day started off nice, taking a bus at 8:00am to the Hirschvogel factory in Denklingen which is about 30 miles south of Augsburg. Along the way, we rode through the German countryside again, a lot like the first day. There were large open fields and rolling hills that at one point turned into a steep valley with a river running through. After traveling through the beautiful countryside for about an hour, we arrived at Hirschvogel.
At 9:00am, we met with Dr. Hans-Willi Raedt, the Head of Advanced Engineering at the Hirschvogel Factory. We started with a presentation given by Dr. Raedt about the company itself. Here we were able to ask questions and learn about the company more in depth than we could the previous day from just the website. That was only supposed to take about an hour, but we didn’t make it out until nearly 10:45 because of the questions we were asking. Following this, Dr. Raedt took us on a tour of the factory.
The tour was amazing because we were able to see the giant forging machines in action. We began with cold-forging, which is done at room temperature. There, a giant press pushes a billet into a tool, which then creates the part that is being produced. At the factory there were many different parts being produced, from transmission components, to wheel hubs, to drive shafts; they were producing just about anything you could imagine for vehicles.
From there we went to warm and hot-forging, which are done at much higher temperatures (warm: ~800C, hot: ~1200C). It was the first time I have ever seen metal so hot that it was glowing. The machines that pressed these metals into the necessary parts were ginormous, as tall as a house and wider than a car. Some of the processes were automated, and some weren’t, but they all involved the giant presses coming down and forging the steel. Some were so big that with each press they shook completely from side to side, and to combat this there were rubber dampers installed which allowed the press to rock back and forth more freely. When we asked, we found that each of the machines in the factory cost between 5-10 million euro, and there were a ton of them (I could guess on the number but I would never know for sure).
Additionally, on the tour, we saw where Hirschvogel kept their sourced steel and learned that they use about 1,000 tons of steel every day and that all of that steel is brought in every day on semi-trucks. The tour lasted until 1:30, at which point we were given food to eat. Even in the café you could hear and feel the vibrations from the machines. After lunch, we said our goodbyes and gave our hosts a picture of one of Andy Warhol’s paintings of a Campbell’s soup can, so that they could have a little piece of Pittsburgh to remember us.
From there, we boarded the bus to Oberammergau, a small town located in the Alps. It took us about a half hour to get there, but once we were there we were able to walk around and enjoy the little town, walking in and out of shops looking for little souvenirs and admiring the mountain views. It was really amazing walking through the village as it was the quintessential Bavarian town, complete with small houses and windy stone roads, surrounded by mountains After being there for an hour, we boarded the bus again, this time to a gondola lift that would take us to the Laber, a mountain nearby known for its scenic views.
An old Honda motorcycle that I thought was nice and matched the shudders of the house it was parked next to.
Once we rode to the top of the mountain (which was an amazing ride), we were greeted with the view of a lifetime, and it just took my breath away. We ended up staying on the top of the mountain for about an hour, taking pictures with each other, throwing snowballs, and admiring the view. Once we reached the bottom, we hopped on the bus for the hour and a half ride back to the hotel. Almost everyone slept most of the way (me included) and had to be woken up once we arrived.
View of the Austrian side from the Laber. It’s difficult to see, but dead center there is a little town that you can see called []. Also, the farthest right peak is called the Zugspitze and is the tallest peak in Germany at a height of just under 10,000 feet. In this picture, Zupspitze’s peak is 12 miles away.
For dinner, there was not a group outing planned as part of the program, so we were able to decide what we wanted to do for ourselves. A few of us ended up going to a small restaurant called Arkadas, where we had the famous Doner sandwich, which was fantastic. After that, we stopped by a small gelato restaurant where we were able to get different flavors with waffle cones. We then headed back to the hotel for the night to get a good night’s sleep after a busy day.
The takeaways of the day:
The German adoption of continuous improvement. In high school, I interned at a company called Karl Storz, which had a plant in Charlton, Massachusetts but is headquartered in Tuttlingen, Germany. While I was there, I became skilled in Kaizen production methodologies such as continuous improvement and one piece flow. These are ideas introduced in Japan in 1986 by management consultant Masaaki Imai. The ideas have since traveled all over the globe and are being implemented in all types of different settings. It was heavily emphasized at Karl Storz, and it was really interesting to see the same emphasis today at Hirschvogel. Dr. Raedt mentioned the extensive use of these principles within the company, and the extent to which it has improved the efficiency of the company itself, especially in their newer facilities. He mentioned that although the older facilities still employ batching, and that it would likely be improved by implementing one piece flow at some point in the future. It was so neat to hear about the ideas that I have become familiar with being talked about with respect to a different company, and being able to relate what I have learned at Karl Storz to what is happening in other places.
Car of the day: McLaren 650S
We came across this McLaren when we were on our way to get dinner at Arkadas. It was parked on the Maximillianstrasse. It is powered by a twin-turbocharged V8 producing about 640 horsepower and achieving a 0-60 mph time of 2.9 seconds.
Runner up: BMW E30 320i Convertible
The E30 BMW has always been one of my favorite cars, and I have always loved the convertible model. They are fairly common in the United States, but seeing one in Bavaria in the Alps was pretty special. They are powered by an inline six-cylinder that isn’t incredibly powerful, but would make for a very nice cruise.