Hallo wieder! For our fourth day in Germany, we visited our second company of the trip: Grob! Grob is a contract manufacturer, with contracts with Tesla, Siemens, and more. After breakfast at the hotel, we drove to Grob’s headquarters in Mindelheim, Germany. Upon our arrival, we were greeted with a massive plant and dozens of Arbeiter (over 5,000 workers are employed there!) Unfortunately, much like Hoerbiger, we were not allowed to take photos once inside the plant.
Once we arrived, our guide gave us a introduction of the company and its products. Once this presentation was done, we started our tour, in which we quickly realized how large the plant was. The plant is not even finished! The first building consisted of machines that Grob’s customers used to make custom aluminum and steel products with Grob’s supervision. They had many unique creations on display (which I unfortunately could not take any photos of) such as a basketball hoop, a replacement hip bone, and even a statue of the Iwo Jima photo! The next building showed us more general production for larger products, and there was even a building dedicated to assembling machines that Grob will use in its future!
After the tour, we were given free lunch at the plant’s cafeteria. Some days and weeks have special meals, and today was Veggie Day, which is not my palate in the slightest. Despite this, the food wasn’t bad. After lunch, we returned to our meeting room to watch two more talks. The first was about how Grob is planning to adapt to the changing technical landscape and highlighted the importance of communication between employees, all framed in an easy-to-understand sales perspective. The second presentation went over opportunities for an internship and career path for graduates who join Hoerbiger. There is a plant in Bluffton, Ohio (about four hours from Pitt), where it is possible for Pitt students to do an internship/co-op.
Overall, the majority students seemed to prefer Grob over Hoerbiger. Our tour guide was a lot more engaging and personal, which is very uncommon in Germany, and explained everything extremely well. I even understood the majority of the machines, and I know next to nothing about machines and engineering. Furthermore, it was unanimous that Grob is better prepared for the changing market than Hoerbiger is. Grob already has the infrastructure in place to adapt to electric vehicles (and is already making the change), while Hoerbiger is aware of the change, but has made little attempts to adapt. Furthermore, Hoerbiger’s automobile plant that we visited yesterday did not have the infrastructure needed to make a change, which will cause them to lag behind in market share for longer. Grob also does contracts with other companies, giving it more stability, and offers more diverse products and services.
Our visit at Grob ended at 3 today, so when we arrived back in Augsburg an hour later, we had lots of free time. Most people, me included took about an hour break to rest, as the business from the last few days have caught up to us. There was no group dinner again today, so everyone went out to grab food for themselves. After a bit of wandering, I stopped and got Gebrannte Nudeln at an Asien Imbissstand. Tomorrow, we will be visiting our third company: Forvia. Tschüss!
german words Used:
Hallo wieder = Hello again
Arbeiter = Workers
Gebrannte Nudeln = Fried noodles
Asien Imbissstand = Asian snack/fast-food stand
Tschüss = Bye/Cheers