Lego Production AG
The Lego Production AG was in the 1968 Switzerland established, time, 30% of world production of Lego in Switzerland were manufactured.
history
Your location fell on Baar ZG by chance . The founder of LEGO , Ole Kirk Christiansen , discovered on his return trip to Zurich-Kloten Airport that a Kenwood AG office building with a lot of land was for sale.
The building was bought and served as the Swiss headquarters and operations center. In 1968 the construction of a production hall began and the company was renamed from Lego AG to Lego Produktions AG. As steel girders and prefabricated concrete elements were used, construction did not take long. This created the first Lego factory outside of Denmark . Since the factory was built in the geographic area of Baars with the name Lättich, it was named Lego Lättich .
With the increasing demand, the production was expanded to include Hall 2, then Hall 3 and Hall 4. The construction of Hall 4 also included toolmaking for the injection molds and the research and development department. With this expansion, the land reserves at this location were used up. With a total of 213 injection molding machines, the production site was the largest injection molding shop in all of Switzerland. The nearby Lättich indoor and outdoor swimming pool in the municipality of Baar was heated with the waste heat generated during injection molding . After the production facility was closed, the swimming pool had to buy a wood chip heating system.
As the demand continued to grow, the tool shop was moved to a new building in Steinhausen . The repair workshop was set up in Lättich in place of the tool shop. As space was still limited, another production facility was set up in the Neuhof area in Baar. This was named Lego Neuhof . In contrast to production in Lättich, not only injection molding was carried out here, but further processing such as pad printing , high-frequency welding, assembly and packaging was also carried out. Here, the full boxes with the Lego parts were automatically replaced by empty ones on the injection molding machines and transported to a high-bay warehouse. The research department was outsourced from Lättich and housed in Rumentikon / Hagendorn (municipality of Cham ) in a new building together with a product development department and an exhibition model construction department. Since the tool shop in Steinhausen and the tool shop in Hohenwestedt in Germany were no longer sufficient to produce enough new injection molds, another tool shop was built in Au SG .
In 1993 a new factory was built for the Lego company in Willisau . The architecture was characterized by a main entrance followed by a connecting corridor that connected the various production halls on both sides. The Willisau production facility also had its own railway track, which was connected to the SBB network. In addition to injection molding, printing, assembly and packaging, Willisau also operated a blow stretching machine for Bionicol packaging and two thermoforming machines for the production of Lego building panels.
In 1998 Lego experienced its first crisis. In the course of this crisis, model construction and product development in Rumentikon were closed, the research and development department remained in Rumentikon. The tool shop in Au was sold to the injection mold manufacturer Otto Männer GmbH (Barnes Group Inc.), who took over the entire staff.
After this phase, the Lego group recovered briefly. At this point in time, the idea for a Legoland amusement park in Rotkreuz in the canton of Zug was born. However, the project could not be implemented because the affected farmers in Rotkreuz were not ready to sell their land. At the beginning of 2000, the Lego Group closed its factory in the USA and withdrew the orders placed with external companies for the “Lego-Watch” watch series, all of which were integrated into the Lättich and Neuhof production.
At the beginning of 2001, due to lower profits than planned, it was decided that the Lättich production site should be completely abandoned within six months and Neuhof production within one year. 400 out of 950 employees were to be laid off. However, the closings were effectively postponed by over a year. The Neuhof plant was taken over by the Post as a sorting center and by the transport company Bucher Bitsch as a storage location. Several companies are now housed in the Lättich plant, the largest being the SPECK PRINT AG printing company, which has since gone bankrupt and also produced the Zug Official Gazette. Research and development (research with various plastics and manufacturing processes) was also closed. The tool shop in Steinhausen was sold in 2005 to the Wisi 'on Tool AG rescue company. Wisi 'on Tool was able to rely on further orders from Lego, however, and no closure was planned for Willisau. However, the Lego group had a new strategy, the license production of Lego products by Chinese companies. Therefore, the production in Willisau was closed in 2005. The Competec group (Brack, Alltron, ...) acquired the Lego area in Willisau with 55,000 square meters in 2011.
Today only Lego's sales and finance departments are located in Switzerland.
Products
The following Lego products were manufactured in Switzerland:
Technical equipment
Lego mainly used injection molding machines from the brands Arburg (D) and Engel (Austria), but also machines from Battenfeld (Austria) and Klöckner-Werke (D). Only in the Lättich plant were up to 6 two-component machines used. Most of the additional devices used for sprue removal, heating control and post-processing were developed and built by Lego itself. For the cooling water devices, Lego relied exclusively on temperature control devices from HB-Therm. Cardboard boxes were initially used to store the Lego bricks, later standardized plastic containers of various sizes were used. Although all these plastic containers were intended exclusively for internal use in the Lego Group, they were not produced in-house.
Web links
- SwissLUG , Swiss LEGO Association
- steinCHenwelt , Swiss LEGO exhibition
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Baar production site at the end: Sharp restructuring in the Lego Group , NZZ, March 2, 2001, accessed on August 11, 2016
- ↑ https://www.holzenergie.ch/uploads/tx_ttproducts/datasheet/820_Holzheizzentrale_Baar_Laettich.pdf | Baarer Weitsicht wood heating plant in Lättich
- ↑ http://web2.cylex.de/firma-home/lego-gmbh-1643676.html
- ↑ Downsizing at Lego in Baar , NZZ, March 1, 2001, accessed on August 11, 2016
- ↑ Lego extends production in Baar. , NZZ, October 27, 2001, accessed on August 11, 2016
- ↑ http://www.wisiontool.ch/ueber-uns/ Homepage of Wisi 'on Tool AG about the LEGO past of the company
- ↑ Willisau logistics center Ex LEGO factory now Willisau logistics center from Competec
- ↑ a b Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen: Herr der Klötzchen , April 5, 2005, accessed on August 11, 2016