Svenska Kullagerfabriken
| AB SKF
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| legal form | Corporation |
| ISIN | SE0000108201 |
| founding | 1907 |
| Seat |
 Gothenburg , Sweden
|
| management | Alrik Danielson (President and CEO ) |
| Number of employees | 48,593 (December 31, 2014) |
| sales | 63.6 billion SEK (2013) |
| Branch | mechanical engineering |
| Website | www.skf.com |
Svenska Kullagerfabriken ( AB SKF ) is a Swedish group with an extensive range of products and services in the areas of rolling bearings , seals , lubrication , mechatronics ( linear systems , actuators , preloading tools ) and related services . From 1929 to 1953, SKF in Germany was called Vereinigte Kugellagerfabriken AG (VKF), with its headquarters in Schweinfurt .
Current business situation
AB SKF is headquartered in Gothenburg , has 48,593 employees (as of December 31, 2014) and around 165 production facilities in 28 countries covered by the Group's current ISO 14001 certificate. The SKF Group is represented in over 130 countries around the world and has a dealer network with more than 15,000 branches.
According to the 2013 Annual Report of the SKF Group, sales were 63.597 billion SEK (approximately 7.5 billion euros) and profit before tax was 2.821 billion SEK.
The Group's customers include Rolls-Royce and Pratt and Whitney . SKF also supplies rolling bearings for the Formula 1 racing cars and is a sponsor of Ferrari .
history
From the foundation to 1960
SKF was founded in Gothenburg in 1907 to make industrial use of self-aligning ball bearings , an invention of the Swedish engineer Sven Gustaf Wingqvist . The company grew rapidly and by 1918 SKF had 12,000 employees in twelve factories in different countries. In the following years more ball and roller bearings were developed.
In 1926 the subsidiary Volvo AB was also founded, which manufactured test vehicles and became independent in 1935. Further developments such as the spherical roller thrust bearing 1940 and other special bearings contributed to the growth of the Swedish group.
Recent company history
In 2007 the SKF Group celebrated its 100th anniversary among its employees and customers with numerous national and international events.
Acquisitions and divestments of SKF
1980 to 1999
In 1988, SKF bought the rolling bearing division of the Austrian Steyr-Daimler-Puch AG .
The seal manufacturer Chicago Rawhide , which was acquired in 1990, is now part of the SKF Sealing Solutions division , which also includes an SKF plant in Leverkusen .
In the past few years, the SKF Group has been changing its business field more and more and is developing from a pure rolling bearing manufacturer with its own steel mill to a leading provider of products and services for everything to do with drive technology . Since 1995, SKF has acquired companies in various areas of drive technology and established joint ventures in China .
2000 until today
In 2002, SKF sold the textile machinery plant in Stuttgart, in 2005 the SKF Group separated from the Ovako steelworks .
In the years that followed, SKF made headlines through various acquisitions , including the purchase of Willy Vogel AG , a manufacturer of central lubrication systems from Berlin in 2004, and of Economos , an Austrian seal manufacturer in 2006, which until then belonged to the Salzer Holding. In December 2010, the SKF Group also took over the American lubrication system manufacturer Lincoln Industrial .
At the beginning of 2013 the takeover of the mechanical engineering division of Blohm + Voss , Blohm + Voss Industries (BVI), was completed by Star Capital Partners . After being renamed SKF Blohm + Voss Industries GmbH, the company now operates under the name SKF Marine GmbH.
In September 2013 the American Kaydon Corporation was taken over. The company is the market leader in split and thin section bearings. This also brought Cooper Bearings to SKF, whose founder Thomas Cooper had invented the split roller bearing in 1907.
SKF in Germany - past and present
The history of SKF in Germany began even before the Swedish parent company was founded in 1907, namely in 1890 in Schweinfurt , when Wilhelm Höpflinger and Engelbert Fries first founded the German cast steel ball factory Fries & Höpflinger AG and then in 1893 their own sales company in Düsseldorf .
In 1914, SKF took a stake in Norma Compagnie GmbH, founded in 1904 by Albert Hirth in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt . Hirth originally founded the latter as a development company for the Fortuna-Werke, which he also founded . Before the company became independent, Norma produced in the factory halls of Fortuna-Werke.
Growth until the 1960s
From 1925 onwards, SKF pursued an aggressive expansion strategy in Germany towards its competitors.
Within the SKF Group, the German SKF GmbH, which is based in Schweinfurt, has been the most important part of the company since 1929. At that time, SKF acquired the rolling bearing division of Fichtel & Sachs (Schweinfurt), Fries & Höpflinger AG (Schweinfurt), Maschinenfabrik Rheinland ( Krefeld ), the rolling bearing division of Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) ( Berlin ) and the Riebe factory (Berlin) ).
In 1931 production was concentrated in Schweinfurt and Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt and the plants in Berlin and Krefeld were gradually shut down.
Another plant was located in Erkner near Berlin until 1945 . The merged company operated under the name Vereinigte Kugellagerfabriken AG (VKF, from 1953 SKF GmbH). On the supervisory board sat u. a. Ernst Sachs , Peter Klöckner , Fritz Thyssen and Günther Quandt . VKF dominated 80% of the German market. The only remaining German competitor was FAG Kugelfischer .
Under Harald Hamberg (1932–1941) and Gunnar Wester (1955–1964), the German SKF GmbH was by far the largest and most profitable unit within the SKF Group.
The rolling bearing plant in Lüchow , which still exists today , has been part of the SKF Group since 1960. In the 1960s, the company employed more than 10,000 people in Schweinfurt alone, when the representative 14-storey administration tower was built, which has remained the headquarters of SKF GmbH in Germany to this day.
Economic crisis and rationalization since the 1970s
During the economic crisis of the 1970s, various SKF plants, including the plant in Schweinfurt and Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, ran into economic difficulties.
In November 1972, SKF in Schweinfurt was reported to have reduced the number of employees from 17,000 to 15,800 since 1970 and that the company's management was planning to further reduce its workforce to around 14,500 by the end of 1973. On December 12, 1976 at SKF in Schweinfurt, around 2,000 employees in plants 1, 2 and 3 again went on strike for several hours against layoffs. A demonstration was held from Plant 3, which was then outside of the city, to Plant 1 in the city center.
Under development manager Joe Hertz, the “Speedy” system was developed at SKF in Schweinfurt in 1974, which was basically an inline skate chassis with matching wheels. It came onto the market in 1977 and also had interchangeable skate blades. Since no suitable shoe was offered, a buyer had to buy ice skates and have the existing blade removed. Production was discontinued as early as 1978 because a consumer product was viewed as disadvantageous for the product portfolio.
The wave of layoffs soon reached Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, where 2,800 SKF employees were on strike in 1970 and the strikes continued at least until 1977. On May 27, 1977, following a staff meeting at SKF in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, a strike that lasted several days against the threat of 400 more jobs being destroyed by planned production relocations began.
The steady downsizing of staff, which accelerated further from the end of the 1980s due to radical rationalization, ultimately led to the closure of the plants in Bad Cannstatt (2001) and Etzenhofen (2005). At the end of 2007, the German SKF still had almost 6,000 employees, 4,300 of them in Schweinfurt, in the head office and in factories 2 to 4.
Today's SKF in Germany
In addition to the plants in Schweinfurt , the SKF Group in Germany also includes SKF Lubrication Systems Germany GmbH with production facilities in Walldorf, Berlin and Hockenheim. The "Linear Technology and Actuator" division was sold to the investment and holding company Triton in 2018 and will operate under the name and branding of Ewellix from October 2019 .
SKF Sealing Solutions GmbH is also located at the Leverkusen-Opladen location and manufactures all types of seals for the automotive sector. Other SKF plants are located in Lüchow (Wendland) and Mühlheim an der Donau . Since the purchase of Economos in 2006, its production facility in Bietigheim-Bissingen has been part of the SKF Group.
SKF in Austria and Switzerland
In the Alpine countries, the SKF Group is represented on the one hand by SKF Austria AG with a plant in Steyr and on the other hand by SKF Switzerland with headquarters in Schwerzenbach and a SKF Actuation System (formerly Magnetic) plant in Liestal .
Since the purchase of Economos in 2006, the former headquarters of the seal manufacturer in Judenburg (Austria) has also been part of the SKF Group.
engagement
In 1978 the company launched the predecessor of today's inline skates under the name Speedy . The product did not catch on. When inline skates became popular a number of years later, the company became involved in this area, e. B. through sponsorship of the German national inline hockey team .
literature
- Martin Fritz, Birgit Karlsson: SKF A Global Story. 1907-2007 , 2006 ISBN 978-91-7736-576-1
- Thomas Horling: Cartel and Foreign Capital. The German roller bearing industry in the years 1925–1932 , In: Yearbook for Franconian State Research 66 (2006), pp. 521–562, ISSN 0446-3943
- Gabriele Kreuzberger: Factory buildings in Stuttgart - their development from the middle of the 19th century to the First World War , Klett-Cotta 1993, ISBN 3-608-91629-6
Individual evidence
- ↑ RFT SpA seals production planning improvements , accessed June 18, 2011
- ↑ Patent CH42371 : Applied on February 21, 1908 , published on January 16, 1909 , applicant: Sven Gustaf Wingqvist, inventor: Sven Gustaf Wingqvist.
- ↑ 100 Years of SKF , accessed June 18, 2011
- ↑ Chicago Rawhide was purchased by SKF ( Memento of the original from December 3, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 18, 2011
- ↑ SKF sells property in Stuttgart , accessed June 15, 2011
- ↑ SKF Divests Ovako to New Joint Venture Steel Company ( Memento of the original from July 26, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 18, 2011
- ^ Completes Willy Vogel acquisition , accessed June 18, 2011
- ↑ a b c SKF Economos GmbH at Goliath, Business Knowledge on Demand ( Memento of the original dated September 27, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 18, 2011
- ↑ SKF acquires Lincoln Industrial , accessed June 18, 2011
- ↑ Handelsblatt : Shipbuilding company Blohm + Voss sells mechanical engineering division ,
- ↑ SKF to acquire US company Kaydon Corporation , September 23, 2013
- ↑ Cooper strengthens SKF's marine portfolio , SKF Evolution, March 11, 2015
- ↑ The Swedes with German roots ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 18, 2011
- ^ Gabriele Kreuzberger, Factory Buildings in Stuttgart - Their Development from the Middle of the 19th Century to the First World War , Klett-Cotta, 1993, ISBN 3-608-91629-6 , p. 285 f.
- ↑ Start of job cuts in Schweinfurt , accessed on June 18, 2011
- ^ Strikes in Schweinfurt in December 1976 , accessed on June 18, 2011
- ^ Herbert A. Henzler, Lothar Späth: "The Second Turn: How Germany Will Create It", p. 21, 1998
- ↑ SKF Stuttgart , accessed June 18, 2011
- ^ Strikes at SKF in Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1977 , accessed June 18, 2011.
- ↑ Overview of the SKF factories in Schweinfurt. Retrieved March 20, 2018 .
- ↑ SKF production sites in Germany. Retrieved October 23, 2019 .
- ↑ SKF to divest its linear technology and actuator business. In: SKF homepage. August 1, 2018, accessed September 17, 2019 .
- ↑ SKF Motion Technologies becomes Ewellix. In: www.elektrotechnik.vogel.de of the Vogel Communications Group Verwaltungs GmbH, Würzburg. October 9, 2019, accessed October 11, 2019 .
- ↑ http://www.moneyhouse.ch/u/pub/na/skf_actuation_system_%28liestal%29_ag_CH-280.3.911.743-3.htm accessed on June 8, 2010
