Our fourth day in Germany was our second day of company visits. On the day prior, we visited Hoerbiger and this day we were set to visit the companies Grob and Forvia. The first company we visited, Grob (also referred to as Grob-Werke), was headquarted in Mindelheim, about 45 minutes away from Augsburg.

Grob is a huge company, one that makes the machines that other companies use in their factories. We had the opportunity to tour some of their production facilities, including where they trained apprentices. These buildings were huge, and there were many of them.

We also got a presentation about their business development, as well as career opportunities open in the US. I really liked this company, and was impressed by their culture. We also got to eat in their cafeteria, and I will say it was better than Eatery food.

After leaving Grob, we headed to Forvia. Forvia is also a large company, and it is the company I was assigned to present about. Forvia does many things, but the factory we visited produced cars parts. There were some car parts for luxury cars (think $250k cars) that they worked on mainly by hand, as well as a lot of car parts that were made by automation.

We also learned about their involvement in renewable energy and their journey towards net-zero emissions through their hydrogen fuel development. They are the only company in the world at the moment who are producing hydrogen tanks at a mass scale, which was interesting to find out. It’s clear a lot of engineering went into that, and continues to go into it. This will definitely go into my presentation!