The 1,000th anniversary of the city of Neunburg vorm Wald coincides with an important milestone for the largest local employer. "Our company F.EE has grown to 1,000 employees just in the anniversary year. A nice coincidence, "says founder and owner Hans Fleischmann. This happens while there is a job market that makes it difficult for technically oriented companies to find skilled workers.
When Hans Fleischmann started in automation technology 35 years ago, he would never have dreamed of running a 1,000-employee company with his wife Gerlinde and his brother Robert. Fleischmann employed the first employees in the mid-1980s to manufacture control cabinets for production plants. In 1990, he founded the F.EE GmbH together with his wife Gerlinde and brother Robert. The letters of the corporate logo represent Fleischmann Elektrotech Engineering. To grow to 500 employees, the company needed 29 years to 2011. The doubling to 1,000 employees succeeded in just six years to 2017.
An important source for skilled workers is their own education. By 2017, 300 trainees and dual students have graduated from F.EE. And in fall 2017, 46 young people started their training. In order to accelerate growth, it was decided at the end of November to offer even more training places. The application portal has been reopened. The Fleischmanns attach great importance to the quality of training. For the fifth time in succession, the company was honored as the "Best Apprentice Training Company in the Electronics Technician - Automation Technology" field for northern Upper Palatinate this year. Even in a nationwide comparison of the financial magazine Focus Money, F.EE was successful. In a survey among the 5,000 largest German companies, F.EE came sixth in the electrical industry sector among Germany's best training companies.
Nevertheless, the situation on the labor market is slowing growth. "We have to reject some orders because we just do not have enough capacity for them," says Hans Fleischmann. The clients value the quality of F.EE from Neunburg. Among the most important customers is the worldwide automotive industry. F.EE uses robots to plan and build automated production lines that use individual parts to assemble the finished vehicle. F.EE also supplies highly specific engineering and software products for production processes. The Energy Technology division equips photovoltaic plants and hydropower plants. Recently F.EE has been commissioned to design three new hydropower plants in Turkey and to build them as a general contractor.
F.EE services can also be found in municipalities, schools and kindergartens of the Upper Palatinate. As a computer system house, the company supplies customers with computers and suitable programs. Software products from Neunburg help in the field of planning and control of industrial plants, the administration and organization of companies, the digitization of processes or the intelligent control of heating and lighting in buildings. The network of F.EE branches extends from the production site in Neunburg around the globe. The company group is represented in England, Spain and Turkey as well as in China, Mexico and the United States. In Croatia, the newest branch office has just opened with four employees.