The company is a German-Swiss joint venture for cold-rolled flat wire and steel profiles with headquarters in Switzerland. Production there specialized in the manufacture of cold-rolled special profiles. At a second production site in Germany, the focus was on the production of RSH flat wires on six older cold rolling mills.
As part of the company management, the current interim manager pursued the goal of establishing a competence center for cold-rolled flat wires and profiles at the site in Switzerland. As a result, the German production site was to be relocated to Switzerland. The main objectives were to pool the expertise that had previously been spread across the sites and to leverage synergies in the form of potential cost savings (procurement of input materials, overhead costs, site costs, etc.). For the market and customers, the relocation of production at the German site was to be as "quiet" as possible.
Step-by-step relocation of the cold rolling mills from Germany
In the first step, two of the six cold rolling mills were dismantled at the German site, transferred to Switzerland and rebuilt there. The required personnel were recruited in Switzerland and trained by the German employees, who traveled to Switzerland on a weekly basis and were deployed there. This enabled the first customer orders to be relocated in terms of machinery and personnel.
Swiss machinery modernized with millions in investment
In parallel, the joint venture invested a seven-figure sum at the receiving production site in Switzerland to upgrade the outdated machinery and give the planned center of excellence a corresponding level of value. In this way, customer orders could be transferred step by step from Germany to Switzerland. Once the necessary capacity had been built up, two more of the existing machines could be relocated to Switzerland and two more were no longer needed.
Resistance leads to conflicts with an impact on quality
The company management and the current interim manager had to overcome considerable resistance during this project. In particular, they had clearly underestimated the emotional reactions and resistance to the relocation of production on the German side. The loss of jobs associated with the relocation meant that the willingness to transfer the know-how of the generally customer-specific requirements to the newly recruited employees in Switzerland was much more difficult than hoped and expected.
Joint venture successfully gets back on track after irritations
These difficulties resulted in a significantly higher level of complaints and negative customer reactions. The tendencies towards persistence at all levels of the selling unit were significantly higher than expected in advance and therefore significantly extended the planned relocation period. Overall, the project could only be completed with a considerable delay and significantly higher customer irritation. After this phase, the company finally got back on track successfully.
