So far in our trip to Germany, we’ve done two company visits; yesterday to Hoerbiger, and today to Grob in Mindelheim, 45 minutes south of Augsburg.

Grob specializes in producing automatic machining centers, capable of milling, grinding, turning, in addition to logistics and storage systems. The company also designs their machines with compatible interfaces with their other products, allowing for a complete turn-key assembly line to be installed. from raw material to finished product. They refer to themselves as “quiet champions”, being a firm that isn’t well known by the public, but hold a significant market share with major manufacturing firms across the globe, notably in the automotive industry. With major customers in General Motors, Ford and Tesla, in addition to connections to healthcare and energy storage industries, Grob maintains a very strong grasp on high quality manufacturing equipment.

There are significant differences between these two manufacturing firms, their products and their business practices, in addition to size and production capacity. Hoerbiger is a relatively small company, focusing on a short list of products. While they hold a significant market share with their piezo value control chips and synchronizing rings for manual transmissions, these are the primary products the company sells. Consequently, their plants are sized to handle the production needs for their products based on current demand, which again is relatively small. As a result, they are not equipped to handle significant changes in their industries. At the moment, the valve control chips are selling well, but the synchronizing rings business is fading due to a lack of manual transmission vehicles being sold, in addition to the large shift from ICE to electric vehicles. Hoerbiger does not have concrete plans as to how to handle this change. Their company structure limits them in how much they can adjust their production to serve this demand; they must break even on the project within two years, per company policy, to continue a certain method. Such a large shift is very difficult under this time limit, though is possible if done correctly.

Conversely, Grob is universally larger compared to Hoerbiger. This company has a large production capacity and broad and deep range of customers at the top of various industries. The company embraces industry change; if a customer wishes for a new type of machine, Grob will design and built it. They will create a way to decrease the production times of these machines to a minimum, to produce as many as the customer needs. They are aware of the shift from ICEs to electric vehicles, and work alongside OEMs to produce the machines necessary to increase the production of necessary components, including stators and energy storage cells. In addition, they will continue to sell new machines and services to OEMs looking to produce ICE vehicles. In summary, Grob has the strategy and the capacity to sustain business in both areas for years to come.

What stood out the most about Grob was their attitude towards innovation. As mentioned above, if they see potential to improve process efficiency, whether for their products or for their in-house machines, they will jump on it. Throughout the tour, our guide pointed out machines on Grob’s factory floor that were specifically designed to produce parts for other Grob machines to be sold to customers. In one example, a production cycle previously took 4 weeks to complete. Discovering this bottleneck, Grob engineers designed a new machine specifically for in-house use that cut the production cycle to just 4 days. In the words of our guide, “If there is a machine to be built, we will build it.”

To cap the visit off, the company has internship opportunities at their facility in Bluffton, Ohio, only a four hour drive from Pittsburgh. It’s made its way onto my list for future opportunities before I graduate.