Aeroplanes are meant for flying, not hanging around on the ground. So maintenance work on them can brook no delays and all spare parts must be instantly on hand. That is the core business of Peter Krauss whose company has now been focussed on the full spectrum of surface technologies for the past seven years. In critical areas like the aviation industry high precision and round-the-clock service are of the very essence. And as Peter Krauss points out, what companies in other sectors would celebrate as a major milestone with loud fanfares of publicity has long been mere standard practise for a firm like Krauss Oberflächentechnik:
“The company is on 24/7 call. Our staff is on total flexitime and self-management. Each employee is independent and organises and runs his schedule him or herself. The level of personal responsibility is extremely high – but then so too is the level of job satisfaction. People can come and go as they choose – the main thing is that the job gets done.”
His old classmates from the “Ländle” think that the dynamic 66 year old from Schwabia is a bit crazy. At an age when most other people are leaning back and enjoying their pension, he is now busy planning the next strategic move into the Asian market. From their base in Brandenburg he and his team want to export their particular brand of know-how and at the same time create synergy effects for the region. Because in Krauss’es view the key growth market of the future is Asia.
It was this keen sense for growth market opportunities that made him hit on Brandenburg as the ideal place to locate his company in the wake of German Reunification.
After all these years the entrepreneur is still convinced that he made the right choice. Krauss originally started up in Thuringia – where he still operates a branch of his company – and moved from there to Ludwigsfelde in Brandenburg, where he now has company headquarters. After a modest beginning as sub-contractor in surface technologies for MTU, the trained engineer began a huge investment drive to develop his company in Brandenburg. It was an investment that paid off – because Krauss Oberflächentechnik is now a well established all-in-all manufacturing service-provider with certification on both the European and North American markets. In fact, the company has certification for 90 percent of all products on the market and, according to Krauss, is the first company in the world to do so.
The key advantage the region offered the dynamic entrepreneur was its highly qualified professional workforce. “You have a labour pool of qualified workers here the like of which you can only find in the region around Munich or Hamburg.” Each year the company also trains two young people as process engineers for surface technology to ensure a steady future supply of trained technicians for the industry with its thermal coating, plating, painting and process blasting divisions. Because Peter Krauss and his team are going places. Krauss Oberflächentechnik was assisted with funding from the federal government, the state of Brandenburg and the ERDF.
Peter Krauss,
Krauss Oberflächentechnik GmbH
