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May 2003 : a visit to the Rollei factory in Braunschweig by the Dutch Rollei Club

by Ferdi STUTTERHEIM

http://www.stutterheim.nl/rollei/rolleigraphy.html

The original version of this text has been posted to the Internet discussion group, "`Rollei Users Group'', RUG, here, on May 12, 2003:

http://digistar.com/rollei/2003-05/0451.html

version française

Thursday morning at 08.00 am I left my home village of Drachten, The Netherlands, for the nearly 400 km trip to Braunschweig,Germany. The first stage was my old university city of Groningen to pick up Huib, who joined me on the trip. Then to Nieuweschans, Bremen, Hanover and Braunschweig were we arrived at our meeting place: the Park and Ride in Salzdahlumer Strasse [1] at 12.20 p.m. The rest of the gang, all members of the Rollei Club of the Netherlands, arrived shortly after and we made the short stroll to Number 196, Rollei Fototechnic, where we were received by Mr Dietmar Kanzer, Rollei´s Sales Chief.

After lunch Mr Hubert Schmidt showed the present product line. Then it was time to visit the Rollei Museum. This museum was started by owner Samsung only in 1996. It consists of a former private general collection of cameras with some later additions. Rollei content is limited.

Afterwards it was time to check in at Hotel Deutsches Haus in the city centre. At 7 p.m. it was time for the traditional dinner at the Brewery and Pub "Zum Löwen".

Next morning at 10 a.m. it was time to visit the Rollei Factory. Rollei still use the oldest buildings of the factory complex connected by bridges, well known from old and new pictures [2]. Other buildings now belong to different companies. The left hand building houses management and R and D. The larger, right hand building is the actual factory. Metal parts production is at ground floor. This is a mixture of old and new. Some old tools from the Fifties, relatively new machines by Heckler und Koch (20 years old) and new computer programmed CNC machines (Matra and others). The new machines are able to perform a number tasks in a sequence. A complex part can be finished by one machine in one run. Older machines do just one task at the time. It will take many runs to finish a part.

Rollei is in the process of rationalising production. Production of simple parts is being outsourced. There is still a lot to gain. We saw quite a number of people performing quite simple tasks like drilling a hole or bending a part.

The first floor houses optics production and assembly lines. Optics is quite modern with new computer programmed glass cutting machines. The old Voigtländer stuff is gone now [3]. Lens coating was outsourced recently when the old Leibolt-Heraeus machine broke down. HFT coating is now done by a specialist firm. Mr Kanzer told me they were hiring small companies around Wetzlar (split of from Leitz) for coating and other tasks. A completely refurbished production room was empty. This was meant for the production of electronic prints. These prints are outsourced too. The new room will house lens assembly shortly.

All this means that quite a number of square metres in the factory are free. Rollei will abandon the office building and move offices to the factory building. The old office building will be let.

Except for TLRs, the assembly lines are modern. Workers perform a number of tasks. Slide projector production is limited to Winter times; they do not sell in Summer. So now it was time for TLR production! Some 20 per day, a 100 per week. Thursday must have been a day for Rolleiflex FW (New Rollei-Wide) production [4]. We saw 20 new Wides at final inspection. Production of Bay IV lens hoods is scheduled for the third week of May and BayIV lens caps will be finished in early June. Today FX production was on. This is still the old Fifties assembly line. It became quite clear why a Rolleiflex is expensive. A lady was hand painting the cutting edges of leather finishing in the right colour. Otherwise the cutting edges would show unfinished leather.

6008 Assembly runs separate from TLR and is modern. Workers have a carousel with frames in front of them. Next to them a number of trolleys with parts. They take a frame form the carousel end add one or more parts. Then the frame is replaced and the carousel is turned to get to the next frame. And so on. Every day they start filling their carousel with frames and look for the trolleys with the right parts. After this they can remain seated for a few hours. At the end of the day the partly built-up frames are moved to next station. Assembly stations can easily be adapted to produce different models.

So, quite a number of changes since my last visit, two years ago [5]. I am convinced these changes are inevitable. Rollei also abandoned development and production of professional digital cameras. The life cycle of these cameras is too short for Rollei. It is left to electronic firms. That should worry us. Imaging is taken over from optical firms like Rollei (and Nikon and Canon?) by electronics companies like Sony and HP! Rollei consumer digital cameras are bought from others. Maybe professional models too. Rollei remain active in the field of digital backs for the 6000 series.

At 1 p.m. it was time for lunch and time to pick up our purchases. I ordered a BayIV lens cap and a BayIV lens hood for my Classic Rollei Wide [6] for delivery in June. They are copies of the old ones. We saw the prototypes. There are two small changes, the new hens hood is machined in one piece from one solid aluminium block. The old one consisted of a sheet metal hood fitted in a solid mount. The inside of the hood now shows ribbings.

I would like to thank Rollei for their hospitality.

Ferdi Stutterheim, Drachten, The Netherlands. ferdi@stutterheim.nl


http://www.stutterheim.nl

Additional notes

HTML version by Emmanuel Bigler May 21, 2003