Our general manager Klaus Hirzel wrote in his latest blog entry about the Lufft year 2013 and the plans for 2014. In his opinion, increasing processes of change come up to us with more and more international business and individual customer solutions. More to read in his blog entry…
Our Lufft year 2013 is one of the very good, though not one of the best years. Technically oriented companies are subject to variations in the innovation cycles. In some years there are many new product launches, in other years like 2013 rather few.
In other words: “Innovation is when the cash register rings.”
Therefore 2014 will become a very special and important year for Lufft, as we introduce in the next spring a unique new product to the world market, which will lead to a significant increase in sales. At this product development we worked intensively for years and it is in our companys history the most elaborate and expensive single project. A robot will test the product at our place “24/7” and help to optimize .
The importance of the Chinese market has continued to increase.
Where would the German economy be without this enormous market and without this fascinating country? It feels like the economic dependence of many industries is already far too high. Lufft China is not only responsible for the sales of our products, but especially for the maintenance during long periods of use. A German wind tunnel installed at Lufft Shanghai, serves to maintain the accuracy of our wind sensors for many years.
The Chinese government has adopted a strategic package to make “the world’s factory” to the No.1 state for innovation on our planet. There must be no doubt, that the Middle Kingdom will achieve this goal by 2025. In my opinion this will not last that long.
The German market continues to lose its meaning, but has significant additional benefits from very close cooperation with our end customers.
Abroad we often have only “indirect” contacts with our applications by Lufft partners worldwide. Together with our partners we have decided, that we give to all 200 national weather services our business card and present us in detail in 2014.
The next (last) large market penetration in Lufft starts from 2014: Africa.
The infrastructure there must be expanded rapidly and the development of environmental monitoring networks is of great importance. Our weather sensor matrix is designed for such applications: almost maintenance free, easy to integrate, without noticeable technical drift and calibrated.
The internationalization of a medium-sized company is a major task, for which we need the right employees. In addition to the expertise of the personal (intercultural) competence, coupled with excellent language skills (not only in English!) is becoming increasingly important, in fact indispensable. Why want all the excellent graduates only to the “feel-good companys” (statemant of a HR manager in a Swabian large company)? The middle class has attractive tasks for all young people who really want to make and move .
Be innovative, customer listening, act flexibly and deliver defect-free products.
Who can do that, must be not worryed to make global changes. Customers define already long ago the majority of our product developments and improvements. The sales must first bring a correct diagnosis together with our customer. On this base we can recommend the best medicine: that we can “help”. In production, we characterize the keywords “one- piece-flow” and Kanban. Since the variant production is increasing, we can be flexible enough to still be able to deliver quickly with reasonable affordable stocks with just those invented by Toyota manufacturing bases. “Factory of the Year” to be, that’s it really .
Conclusion: Tasks enough. Our Californian staff often say about their work: “That is a lot of fun.” Might sound a little odd to Swabian ears, but to say: Only someone who likes to do what he does, will make it very good.
That is what we wish us for ourselves and all our employees in the coming years.
