Today I got to sleep in a little later than the last three days. It was nice to finally not feel rushed in the morning! The group and I visited Grob Company in Mindelheim, Germany. The day consisted of an introductory presentation, factory tour, presentation about the company, and finally an HR presentation. All the hosts were extremely kind and welcoming. Unfortunately, I won’t have a lot of cool pictures to show in today’s blog, as we were NOT allowed to take pictures during the tour.
The tour was unique compared to Hoerbiger because Grob’s tour was a lot more spread out among different buildings. The “campus” was huge, and required us to walk outside several times in order to continue the tour in between some of the several buildings there were. It is fascinating to me how popular smoke breaks are. During the “lunch break”, almost everyone had a cigarette pack. What was very cool, and different about Grob was that there was big emphasis on the fact that Grob has machines for machines. For example, there was a machine that made parts that would later contribute to a different robot or machine. This was essential because it allows Grob to basically one of its own sole providers for pieces and parts. Of course, they still rely on other companies, but it seemed a lot more sustainable to me than Hoerbiger. A quick side note: I was really fascinated for some reason by the welding done by the robots.
Following the tour, we had the presentation about the company, and the statistics were very impressive, but I was more pulled into the HR presentation. The treatment towards employees seemed a lot more emphasized than it is in the United States. For example, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we learned that there were no cuts (due to the Pandemic… of course one could be fired due to a personal reason). This was very shocking because in the United States there were massive cuts across the country solely because of the Pandemic. Dr. Feick explained to us that this was not only a thing at Grob company, but it was very common for German companies. This makes German companies more appealing to me than American companies in a way. It shows how much more sustainable and long-lasting a job is. On the other hand, we also learned that the starting pay-rate for German companies would be lower, so I guess you have to choose which type of company has more pros than cons when deciding between them.
We headed home after our visit at Grob company, and we all split up and got our own dinners. I ended the night out with my friends, exploring Augsburg and its night life. Before I end today’s blog, I wanted to show a picture of how sugar is packaged sometimes for coffee. I was very mesmerized by it, because I had never seen it in a little cube before:
Talk soon!
Kaylee