Late in 2017 the media reported the loss of 220 jobs (inaccurately as it turns out) at Sports Optics in Wetzlar, and the creation of 70 jobs in Oberkochen. A trade union representative speculated that future manufacturing would be done at the Zeiss factory in Hungary.
These news items raised far more questions than they answered and with delays in the long-awaited SF 32 and in the Harpia scope reaching the shops, I was determined to try to find out what is happening at Zeiss Sports Optics. Certainly the news bulletins gave the impression that manufacturing in Wetzlar was being wound down.
Zeiss is divided into different business groups, one of them being Consumer Products, which includes photographic and cine lenses as well as Sports Optics. This business group has at its head Jörg Schmitz, who has been in post for about a year, and who I met at last year’s Bird Fair. I asked him if he could make himself available for an interview concerning the re-structuring of Sports Optics, and he agreed to do this at this year’s Bird Fair.
Herr Schmitz was educated at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn and Universität St. Gallen, and subsequently had a distinguished and successful career in management at internationally known companies such as Diageo, Braun and Kaercher.
I had a series of questions to put to Herr Schmitz and recorded his answers which form the basis of this article. However, although I had originally planned to publish this in the form of a ‘question and answer’ interview, the fact is that our ‘interview’ roamed backwards and forwards over these topics, because they are so inter-connected, so that it seemed more logical to use these responses to produce a synthesis in the form of an article with quotations, rather than a verbatim record.
I asked Herr Schmitz what the restructuring was meant to achieve, and what the roles of the factories at Wetzlar, Oberkochen and in Hungary will be, and also how successful they have been at managing the retention of staff due to the movements of jobs to other sites and also to the recruitment of staff to replace losses.
He replied: “First of all there has not been 220 job losses because many jobs have been transferred. Eighty jobs in those functions which are close to the customer (this means product development and management, marketing, digital innovation and sales) have been moved to Oberkochen to merge with those departments there, and 70 jobs have been created in other parts of our manufacturing network, which principally means our factory in Hungary. Regarding the job losses in Wetzlar, because we have sister companies in the town (for example Zeiss SMT) many of our former colleagues were able to find jobs there, and others decided to retire. It was important to us that all of this was achieved without any dismissals or terminations of employment.
Manufacturing in Germany is expensive and we needed to secure our competitive position for the long term, and changes in the demands of the market are happening at a faster pace today, so we need a much more efficient way to respond to these changes. To do this we have combined our product development teams from Wetzlar and Oberkochen into one unit in Oberkochen, which makes us more efficient in dealing with the demands of research and development at Consumer Products. As of today all of the product management and marketing positons are filled, we are recruiting engineers, and we expect all of these positions to be filled by the end of this year.
“To be very clear, Wetzlar remains Sports Optic’s key manufacturing site, with all critical components being manufactured there and all final assembly and quality assurance performed there. Some pre-production (prototyping) parts and some optical parts will be made in Hungary and of course there are some parts that have always been sourced outside of Zeiss Group for example rubber armour and eye-cups. For our main Victory products all optical components will be produced by Zeiss, the sole exception being the Zeiss Pockets which were developed by Zeiss but are produced in Japan to achieve the right price”.
It occurred to me at this point that perhaps one of the reasons why the Zeiss Pockets are not made in Hungary, like the previous Zeiss Victory Compacts, could be to free-up capacity in Hungary to play more of a role of ‘partner’ to production in Wetzlar.
It is now well known that Conquest HD and Terra ED are produced with the participation of far-eastern suppliers or are produced entirely there, with quality assurance effected in Wetzlar, so I asked Herr Schmitz if out-sourcing and sub-contracted manufacturing would play an increased role in the future and he said: “No, it will stay on a similar level to now, as long as those suppliers continue to meet our high standards, and this we constantly check”.
Knowing that warranties and repairs are constantly discussed on Birdforum I also asked where customer service would be based and whether the numbers of employees working on this had been reduced and Herr Schmitz replied: “There is no reduction in customer service employees and in fact we have been working to make significant improvements to the level of customer service. We have looked at how this is done in different companies, not only optics companies, but also for example Amazon, and we are investing in new systems and software to improve communications with our customers so they are fully informed of the progress of their binoculars or scope through the customer service procedure. And please understand this isn’t done because we view customer service as some kind of cost-centre which needs controlling, we see this as a vital part of our business and we know we can, and must, improve it”.
I also asked Herr Schmitz if the radical overhaul of the manufacturing network would also lead to a radical overhaul of the product range. He said that he could not make announcements about future products at this time but that different ways to capture opinion and feedback from the market were being put into place and that the newly combined product development team in Oberkochen is now able to be more responsive and flexible to these market demands.
Finally I threw a few questions at Herr Schmitz that were not directly related to the re-structuring:
Q: When will you put HT glass in SF?
A: It already has it!
Q: Do you think carbon fibre could be a useful weight-saving material for bino and scope optical tubes?
A: Actually we are looking into new materials and methods to help weight saving but we are not yet in a position to make any announcements.
Q: There have been long delays before products reached retail outlets following the announcement of HT, SF and now Harpia. What is your plan to stop this happening again?
A: Yes, this is correct, and we didn’t like this at all. This is another reason for the combining of development resources together in Oberkochen which will give us a greater capacity and flexibility, and greatly improve the speed from prototype to series production.
So there you have it. The interview took quite a long time and Herr Schmitz was more than comfortable devoting it to communicating with the Birdforum membership. One thing that constantly impressed itself on me was the feeling that Zeiss realises it has been looking inwards too much and for too long in recent times, and that reaching out to the market and opening communications with it is going to be a strong feature of the way Zeiss Sports Optics works in the future.
Lee
These news items raised far more questions than they answered and with delays in the long-awaited SF 32 and in the Harpia scope reaching the shops, I was determined to try to find out what is happening at Zeiss Sports Optics. Certainly the news bulletins gave the impression that manufacturing in Wetzlar was being wound down.
Zeiss is divided into different business groups, one of them being Consumer Products, which includes photographic and cine lenses as well as Sports Optics. This business group has at its head Jörg Schmitz, who has been in post for about a year, and who I met at last year’s Bird Fair. I asked him if he could make himself available for an interview concerning the re-structuring of Sports Optics, and he agreed to do this at this year’s Bird Fair.
Herr Schmitz was educated at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Bonn and Universität St. Gallen, and subsequently had a distinguished and successful career in management at internationally known companies such as Diageo, Braun and Kaercher.
I had a series of questions to put to Herr Schmitz and recorded his answers which form the basis of this article. However, although I had originally planned to publish this in the form of a ‘question and answer’ interview, the fact is that our ‘interview’ roamed backwards and forwards over these topics, because they are so inter-connected, so that it seemed more logical to use these responses to produce a synthesis in the form of an article with quotations, rather than a verbatim record.
I asked Herr Schmitz what the restructuring was meant to achieve, and what the roles of the factories at Wetzlar, Oberkochen and in Hungary will be, and also how successful they have been at managing the retention of staff due to the movements of jobs to other sites and also to the recruitment of staff to replace losses.
He replied: “First of all there has not been 220 job losses because many jobs have been transferred. Eighty jobs in those functions which are close to the customer (this means product development and management, marketing, digital innovation and sales) have been moved to Oberkochen to merge with those departments there, and 70 jobs have been created in other parts of our manufacturing network, which principally means our factory in Hungary. Regarding the job losses in Wetzlar, because we have sister companies in the town (for example Zeiss SMT) many of our former colleagues were able to find jobs there, and others decided to retire. It was important to us that all of this was achieved without any dismissals or terminations of employment.
Manufacturing in Germany is expensive and we needed to secure our competitive position for the long term, and changes in the demands of the market are happening at a faster pace today, so we need a much more efficient way to respond to these changes. To do this we have combined our product development teams from Wetzlar and Oberkochen into one unit in Oberkochen, which makes us more efficient in dealing with the demands of research and development at Consumer Products. As of today all of the product management and marketing positons are filled, we are recruiting engineers, and we expect all of these positions to be filled by the end of this year.
“To be very clear, Wetzlar remains Sports Optic’s key manufacturing site, with all critical components being manufactured there and all final assembly and quality assurance performed there. Some pre-production (prototyping) parts and some optical parts will be made in Hungary and of course there are some parts that have always been sourced outside of Zeiss Group for example rubber armour and eye-cups. For our main Victory products all optical components will be produced by Zeiss, the sole exception being the Zeiss Pockets which were developed by Zeiss but are produced in Japan to achieve the right price”.
It occurred to me at this point that perhaps one of the reasons why the Zeiss Pockets are not made in Hungary, like the previous Zeiss Victory Compacts, could be to free-up capacity in Hungary to play more of a role of ‘partner’ to production in Wetzlar.
It is now well known that Conquest HD and Terra ED are produced with the participation of far-eastern suppliers or are produced entirely there, with quality assurance effected in Wetzlar, so I asked Herr Schmitz if out-sourcing and sub-contracted manufacturing would play an increased role in the future and he said: “No, it will stay on a similar level to now, as long as those suppliers continue to meet our high standards, and this we constantly check”.
Knowing that warranties and repairs are constantly discussed on Birdforum I also asked where customer service would be based and whether the numbers of employees working on this had been reduced and Herr Schmitz replied: “There is no reduction in customer service employees and in fact we have been working to make significant improvements to the level of customer service. We have looked at how this is done in different companies, not only optics companies, but also for example Amazon, and we are investing in new systems and software to improve communications with our customers so they are fully informed of the progress of their binoculars or scope through the customer service procedure. And please understand this isn’t done because we view customer service as some kind of cost-centre which needs controlling, we see this as a vital part of our business and we know we can, and must, improve it”.
I also asked Herr Schmitz if the radical overhaul of the manufacturing network would also lead to a radical overhaul of the product range. He said that he could not make announcements about future products at this time but that different ways to capture opinion and feedback from the market were being put into place and that the newly combined product development team in Oberkochen is now able to be more responsive and flexible to these market demands.
Finally I threw a few questions at Herr Schmitz that were not directly related to the re-structuring:
Q: When will you put HT glass in SF?
A: It already has it!
Q: Do you think carbon fibre could be a useful weight-saving material for bino and scope optical tubes?
A: Actually we are looking into new materials and methods to help weight saving but we are not yet in a position to make any announcements.
Q: There have been long delays before products reached retail outlets following the announcement of HT, SF and now Harpia. What is your plan to stop this happening again?
A: Yes, this is correct, and we didn’t like this at all. This is another reason for the combining of development resources together in Oberkochen which will give us a greater capacity and flexibility, and greatly improve the speed from prototype to series production.
So there you have it. The interview took quite a long time and Herr Schmitz was more than comfortable devoting it to communicating with the Birdforum membership. One thing that constantly impressed itself on me was the feeling that Zeiss realises it has been looking inwards too much and for too long in recent times, and that reaching out to the market and opening communications with it is going to be a strong feature of the way Zeiss Sports Optics works in the future.
Lee
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