(MENAFN- Dubai PR Network)
fischer fixing systems set benchmarks in the Middle East - Demanding projects and high social commitment The fischer Group of Companies in profile - Innovative solutions fischer fixing systems - Always a fitting solution Prof. Klaus Fischer, the Entrepreneur - Ambitious foresight Prof. Klaus Fischer - Short biography fischer Group of Companies - Facts & figures fischer fixing solutions prove themselves in India - Anchors for the tallest statue in the world Opening of Klaus Fischer Laboratory at Tongji University - fischer supports research in the field of fixing technology Building 4.0 - fischer invests in Building information modeling 3D printing - fischer takes a share in 3D printing startup Xioneer Dubai, UAE, January 20, 2019:fischer fixing systems set benchmarks in the Middle East & Africa
Demanding projects and high social commitment
Its wide product range of comprehensive fixing solutions and its extensive individual customer service has made fischer fixing systems a sought-after partner for national and international clients on the Arabian Peninsula. The United Arab Emirates subsidiary is just as involved with the realisation of large infrastructure measures as with the construction of numerous large-scale projects for industry and trade as well as sport and culture. Its innovative products and solutions mean the company is well positioned for the Arabic market. An increase in turnover is also expected for the upcoming years.
The Arabian Peninsula represents an economically prosperous region in the long term. Increasing tourism and large-scale events such as the football world cup in Qatar 2022 as well as advances in industrialisation and urbanisation will see construction activity continue for many more years. Large infrastructure projects such as roads, energy parks and apartment construction, signifying long-term utilisation of the construction industry and building suppliers.
The Middle East as a whole, in recent years has become the one of the top construction hubs in the world with many iconic and large scale projects, be it the Burj Khalifa or the Burj Al Arab to the more recent Louvre Museum in Abu Dhabi. Fischer has been a part of them all. With some of the most recent high profile projects in UAE being the Expo Metro Line, The various Expo 2020 projects, Zahia City Center, Khalifa Hospital, , in KSA being The Riyadh Metro Elevated and Underground stations, the Jizan Economic City, etc, in Bahrain - The Bahrain Airport Modernization, Abla Pot Line, in Kuwait - Hawalli Court Complex, Sheikh Abdullah Al Salem Cultural Center, and in Oman Mall of Oman, OCEC and many more in other countries such as Pakistan, Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania. And they all have one thing in common.
They all show the diversity of fischer's fixing systems that were implemented for the various requirements of these buildings.
Many opportunities for growth are arising for fischer fixing solutions on the Arabian Peninsula in the years ahead. Because be it plastic dowels, steel anchors or chemical fixings there is significant demand for professional and safe anchoring. The fischer subsidiary founded in 2006 distributes products and also offers their customers a complete system of solutions and technical services through their team of highly qualified engineers. From comprehensive design calculation support through their industry leading FIXPERIENCE software suite to Seismic calculations. The comprehensive services also include on-site seminars and training, pull-out tests and product application training and also direct delivery support of products to the construction sites.
Since its founding the UAE subsidiary has continuously increased its turnover and has opened distribution offices in the neighbouring countries. We are now represented in Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan and even into Africa as of 2018 with new operations in Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania. The aim is to continue to contribute to the success of the family business from the northern Black Forest with double-digit growth. fischer UAE will continue to be involved with infrastructure measures and the construction of industrial facilities in future. The company hopes to further expand distribution in future in order to acquire new client groups.
Apart from business, fischer also takes its Social commitment very seriously, which is why our team at fischer MEA actively participates in many social activities every year be it disaster relief initiatives, college career counselling seminars, public initiatives such as the Walk for education, The Beat Diabetes walk and more. Fischer is also an active supporter of NGOs such as Senses and Al Noor institute for children.
fischer is also well-known in the region for their innovation in introducing many market-leading products. Especially products such as their recently introduced products such as the FBS II multi-use concrete screw, the RM II chemical capsules that don't require drill-hole cleaning, FIS VL single tube chemical anchor system and more.
fischer UAE will continue to achieve its growth goals through customer focus, continuous improvement of all processes and with highly skilled employees. A qualified team of engineers and technicians provide on-site training in the newest developments in fixing technology to users, planners and architects. Experts in the field of research from the German headquarters are regularly on site in order to analyse the demands of the Arabic market and to incorporate these into current development projects.
The international fixing specialist highlights its work on the Arabian Peninsula with further investments. In the autumn of 2016 the subsidiary has opened its new local administrative centre in Dubai, where a fischer AKADEMIE also will be established. The large team consisting of employees from 13 different nations will the commence further demanding projects on the Arabian Peninsula and beyond in order to achieve the set expansion goals.
Innovative solutions
The fischer name and brand stands for plugs and construction kits, but also for components for car interiors, process consulting and electronic systems. 'Innovative solutions reflects the claim by the people working worldwide for the fischer Group of Companies to offer its customers the best solutions and the best products. A wealth of initiatives in education, health and community affairs sets standards in the personal development of co-workers and future generations. While the company meanwhile generates about 75 percent of its sales outside Germany, the Fischer family and many people working for fischer feel that their roots are back home in the Black Forest and that this identity constitutes the groundwork for worldwide growth and innovative solutions.
Inspiring people, creating space for responsible and entrepreneurial thinking and actions, and to give people the values and tools to accomplish the best: these are the key factors for the success of the family-owned enterprise headquartered in Waldachtal-Tumlingen, about 40 miles southwest of Stuttgart in the northern Black Forest, Germany.
Prof. Klaus Fischer is the owner, chairman of the Holding and chairman of the advisory board of the company founded in 1948. Marc-Sven Mengis is the CEO of the Group of Companies.
As far back as 1987, the company developed its corporate values together with its people and consolidated these values in the fischer mission statement. It defines the corporate targets and values of the fischer Group of Companies which hold unchanged throughout the enterprise to this day: innovative, responsible, serious. The group operates globally with a result-oriented approach for the benefit of customers and users. The focus is on avoiding waste and enhancing value creation.
The fischer ProcessSystem eventually evolved from the mission statement, Japan‘s kaizen philosophy, and the awareness that continuous improvement is the key to success. 'Staying open-minded for all things new, being ready for changes and remaining adaptable and fast-responding, these are the essentials for a successful future, says Prof. Klaus Fischer: 'Our people know best what works well at their place of work and what doesn't. They move our company ahead by thinking every day about what we could do better today than yesterday. This is how they fill the concept of continuous improvement with life.
Training and education initiatives
Qualified employees are indispensable in order to remain competitive. In-firm training does not set this course, instead it begins much earlier. Which is why the fischer Group of Companies supports young people's skills through numerous education projects and initiatives in nursery schools, primary schools and secondary schools.
fischer has always placed great value on the established education of young people. With an above average training ratio and over 100 current apprentices and dual study students, it shows the important role that training plays within the company.
The apprentices and dual study students receive intensive support from the start and are taught responsible conduct in various projects. This allows them to competently apply their knowledge to different situations.
fischer's training programme has had an exemplary status for decades and has received multiple awards. As well as providing highly qualified professional training in over 20 occupational profiles, social and methodical competence is conveyed via seminars, visits abroad and independent projects.
Further training
The fischer Group of Companies supports the professional and personal development of its employees with great effort and in a variety of ways. While the 'Management Talent Pool prepares its participants for a management career, the 'Expert Talent Pool supports employees who wish to strike a path in a specialised career. The newly-introduced 'Junior Talent Pool offers graduates (apprenticeships, dual study) with little job experience a broadly based and general further qualification. This gives them an idea of which career path (management or specialist career) could be the right one for their future.
Klaus Fischer BildungsZentrum
The Klaus Fischer BildungsZentrum (education centre) celebrated its five-year anniversary in June 2015. Since 2010, the company-owned facility for further education has offered fischer employees the opportunity to receive further education in various areas in their spare time in addition to their specialized job-related training in the setting of an adult education centre. Personal interests take priority. General seminars and presentations are offered as well as language courses or PC training courses. Over 8,500 participants took part in more than 560 sessions over the past years. Participation is free for employees.
To this day, the family-owned company excels with its powers of innovation which has resulted not only in new products but also in developing new lines of business. Today, these are the business divisions fischer fixing systems, fischer automotive systems, fischertechnik, fischer Consulting and LNT Automation.
The company has 47 national subsidiaries, with production facilities in Argentina, Brazil, China, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic and the USA. By the end of 2017, 5,000 people worldwide generated consolidated sales of 812 million euros. Globally, fischer has its own national companies or distribution partners in 100 countries and generates about 75% of its sales outside Germany.
Always a fitting solution
With a share of sales of about 75 percent, fixing systems are the biggest division in the fischer Group of Companies. The specialist for safe and economical fixing and connecting elements for the construction industry has become one of the market leaders over the last seven decades. The spectrum of products ranges from chemical systems across steel anchors right through to plastic plugs. Whether heavy duty anchorings used in the construction of tunnels, bridges or power generating plants for professionals, or wall and cavity plugs for do-it-yourselfers: fischer has a fitting solution for every fixing issue.
The product portfolio covers over 15,000 articles. These include inter alia dynamic anchors for earthquake zones or for severely stressed buildings, fire protection fixings, innovative facade systems and the first glass fitting where the anchor does not pierce the glass. A wide range of the screws, special products for composite thermal insulation systems, HVAC installations, adhesives, sealants, foams or drill bits show the high variety of fischer fixing systems.
fischer develops and makes its own products, mainly in Germany. The company gives its customers individual support with a wide range of different services. Methods for making installations easier and safer, free construction and design soft-ware, plus technical seminars at the fischer Academy complete the extensive range of customer services around the product variety. From the staff of the fischer Group of Companies 20 times more patents per employee are registered as the average of the German economy. 15.5 million fixing products are sold every day, 11,000 every minute. Also, fischer holds the highest number of construction approval certificates in the whole of Europe.
Ambitious foresight
His 'magic words are Future and Sustainability. For40 years, Klaus Fischer, the visionary entrepreneur has consistently looked ahead, claiming, 'it's only the future which we can shape.
Anyone believing that the fischer plug can no longer be improved will be told by the entrepreneur that it can be done: with the new two-component plug DUOPOWER. Making visions come true that's how Klaus Fischer defines entrepreneurship!
Klaus Fischer is demanding, impatient at times, and always ahead of his time and has been so for more than 40 years: freshly graduated as Dipl.-Eng. (FH), he joined the company at the age of 25 as head of the test facility. Sales in those days totalled 102 million Deutschmark (approx. 51 million Euros), generated by 1,000 fischer people. By the end of 2017, 5,000 people worldwide worked for the family-owned business and generated annual sales totalling 812 million Euros.
Klaus Fischer soon joined the management team, 1980 saw him taking on the overall responsibility and him rapidly developing his own visions. He never lost sight of the new social conditions, the increasing competition in the wake of globalisation, and the growing complexity in his own business. These factors prompted him to initiate changes which made it clear that a wealth of ideas and a spirit of invention are not limited to solving problems with products. Being close to the customer and a sustained service are important to him. The international orientation of the product range follows the needs and requirements of the customers. The successful R & D section is still centred in Germany, but new products are also being developed to market maturity at the sites of the other 46 national subsidiaries worldwide.
Building up competence in the business divisions
Klaus Fischer continually expanded the fixings division, consolidating his leading position in 1993 by taking over Upat GmbH & Co. KG in Emmendingen, in those days Germany's number two fixings manufacturer. Next to plastic plugs, metal heavy-duty anchors gained in importance. His principal focus was on chemical anchorings, a development driven by the purchase of the Baden-based foam and silicone maker Rocca Chemie. Today, the ProduktCenter Chemie in Denzlingen is one of the company's most outstanding success stories: from product development and the production of individual components through the in-house manufacture of the automatic assembly machines right through to the production of the injection resin and the cartridges including the labels, everything is 'made in Germany a unique selling point not offered by anyone else.
Klaus Fischer also intensified the company's diversification. The fischer CBOX, a storage system for music cassettes, marked the first move into the automotive supply business in 1982. Today, fischer automotive systems, specialising in kinematics systems such as ventilation outlets in car interiors, is the second most important division of the Group of Companies. Among its customers are all renowned manufacturers of the international automobile industry.
Learning by playing not only in the children's room. The fischertechnik construction kits, originally intended as Christmas presents for customers, are today found in schools and children's rooms throughout the world. The construction kits help children to grasp technical and scientific basics and to apply these in practice. One of Klaus Fischer‘s earliest concerns was to promote the education of children in a playful way. The construction kits address themes such as renewable energy, electronics, mechanics and structural analysis, but also programming, controlling and measuring computer-controlled models.
Mission statement and ProcessSystem
But Klaus Fischer's understanding of progress and prosperity goes further. In the early eighties, long before it became a fashion trend, he initiated a corporate mission statement worked out in an intensive process together with the workforce and executives and which echoed this way of thinking with three central values: innovative, responsible, serious. The aim is clear: generating profit, economy, ecology and social responsibility are for him the three pillars on which the company's sustained development rests. Internationalisation, the fischer ProcessSystem with items such as 'continuous improvement and 'avoiding waste, 'lifelong learning and many health initiatives are just a few examples.
Klaus Fischer's colleagues in the business world have long associated his name with the concept of Kaizen, the continuous improvement process. In the nineties, Swabia-born Fischer travelled to far-away Japan to find out about lean production and continuous improvement. He passed on his enthusiasm about the Kaizen culture to others, also initiating the close cooperation with a very successful Japanese company: 'We launched the fischer ProcessSystem 15 years ago. Based on the Japanese Kaizen philosophy, the aim is to avoid waste in all corporate areas, departments and divisions, to continuously improve processes, and to consistently listen to the customers. Staff and workforce play a central role in this approach. These are the people with a wealth of experience and knowledge. They know precisely where the weak spots are in the processes, and they know what must be changed to improve these processes.
Staff and workforce have so evolved into entrepreneurs inside the enterprise, accepting more and more responsibility and shaping the company with their daily changes. Mistakes and errors invariably happen. But it's important for Klaus Fischer that mistakes are not made twice and that lessons are learned from the mistake to ensure continuous improvement. 'Our aim is to be ‘best in class‘ not only in terms of products but also in our processes in order to create extra benefit for our customers, says Klaus Fischer. The expertise which fischer has meanwhile gathered in process optimisation resulted in 2004 in the formation of a separate corporate division. The fischer Consulting relays its bundled knowledge from production, administration and services in all industrial sectors to external and internal customers and to business partners.
In 2016, Klaus Fischer increased the fischer Group of Companies' activities in the field of electronic devices by acquiring LNT Automation GmbH. The new business division encompasses the development, production and sale of capacitive touch systems such as multi-touch solutions made of glass and the corresponding controller units. LNT Automation manufactures custom electronic solutions at its headquarters in Nellmersbach near Stuttgart, and at its production site in the Czech Republic. In future, the solutions will play an increasingly important role at fischer.
Exemplary educational initiatives
'A company's biggest assets are not its plant, machinery and equipment, but its people. The success of a business always depends on the people working in it. The crucial factors is how well they are motivated and trained, this is why we invest heavily in our people', says Klaus Fischer. For lifelong learning in leisure time there is now the Klaus Fischer BildungsZentrum, which has integrated the various advanced training and education actions since 2010. Since its inception there have been over 8,500 people attending more than 560 events and seminars. And that's not all: In 2015 a new fitness centre was opened at the Waldachtal headquarters (Freudenstadt district) which the company's employees and retirees can use free of charge seven days a week.
Klaus Fischer‘s exceptional commitment to education is by no means limited to his own enterprise. In early 2015, he set up the Klaus Fischer Foundation for Furthering the Education of Children and Young People. Only the people directly involved are often aware of his generous financial commitment. There hasn't been much publicity about the 1 million Euros donation for the 'Himmelreich children's house, which was completed at the end of 2014 in Tumlingen. But schools and day meeting places in the rural district also benefit from Klaus Fischer's generosity. And so do clubs and organisations dedicated to the furtherance of children and young people. On his 65th birthday, he donated 100,000 Euros for the education of young people, and in Italy, the company's biggest national subsidiary, he gave 65,000 Euros for schools, nurseries and children suffering from cancer.
In the course of the years, Klaus Fischer has received many awards for his educational commitment: in 1996, the Business Medal of the German Federal State of Baden-Wrttemberg, in 1999, the Education Oscar of the German Business Juniors, in 2007, the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class, in 2013, the Grashof Memorial Medal, the highest honour conferred by the VDI. The Tongji University in Shanghai honoured his entre-preneurial achievements with an honorary professorship, and the University of Soil Culture in Vienna and the Stuttgart University awarded him an honorary senatorship. In Padua where fischer Italy is located, he received the State Seal, the highest honour the university city confers. In June 2016 he was honoured with Global DIY-Lifetime Award for his life's work.
The future is here and now
Customers, business partners and employees alike appreciate the fact that Klaus Fischer is foresighted in the best sense of the word ('We think in terms of generations, not quarterly figures), someone who first asks about the future and develops visions for it. It goes without saying that he has also prepared his enterprise for the future quite early on, relying on his directors and management team who to an ever-increasing degree take the weight off his shoulders. Klaus Fischer wants to spend more time thinking about issues of the future such as Industry 4.0 and e-commerce, visiting national subsidiaries, and developing the fischer ProcessSystem further.
There will finally be more time for all things visionary, because Klaus Fischer enjoys being an entrepreneur. As Prof. Konrad Bergmeister, chair in Constructive Engineering at the University of Soil Culture in Vienna and CEO of the Brenner Basistunnel (BBT) put it: he is someone 'who has accomplished extraordinary things with commitment and love of his work and who still has big plans.
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