12.08.2009 | Christian Cahn von Seelen

German Industry way behind in Productivity

While the U.S. manufacturing sector has faced the realities and reduced the workforce, the German industry has resorted to so called "reduced work-time schemes", Kurzarbeit in German.

"Shortwork" sounds like an example from Orwell's newspeak, is however very understandable in a federal election year. Before September, everything is done, to make the economy appear healthy, from the scrapping bonus
(yes, it is contagious and, yes, it has side effects) to boost car sales over various economic incentive packages to, yes, shortwork.

As a result, productivity is soaring in the U.S., while in Germany companies are aching under the load of costs for shortwork.

Not surprising, that many economist are expecting the storm to hit after the election, with a collapsing (car) industry and soaring unemployment rates. 10% of automotive suppliers are on the brink of insolvency, according to a recent study.

Thus the productivity pressure is to hit Germany with full steam. Our consulting practice clearly shows, that the potential is there. However, only with modern methodologies, including video based approaches, there is a realistic possibility to implement these in the remaining short term.

Only, embracing such innovative yet simple methods is not in the heart of the typical German industrial engineer. Rather an expensive automation seems more appealing in most cases....

The U.S. seems to be different. At least, after our recent article YouTube for the Manufacturing Line on the frontpage of the monthly newsletter of the Institute for Industrial Engineers, we had to take our web-application for video based productivity improvement from the web. It crashed under the many requests from the U.S. and, notably, China (according to Google Analytics). Now it is back from a new, more performant server, so make sure to check back!

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