It all began with an idea for an easily erected and moveable construction crane. From this, in 50 years, has grown a group of 50 companies, employing more than 17,000 people, with net sales of more than DM 6bn ($3.3bn). Hans Liebherr was quite an industrial pioneer and entrepreneur.
Liebherr, both the company and the man by all accounts, always prized innovation and excellence. Liebherr products have always been at the leading edge of technology.
The company diversified remarkably rapidly into a wide range of construction equipment, and then to refrigerators and aircraft components. Among cranes, Liebherr produces all-terrain mobiles up to 800t capacity, crawlers, towers, dockside cranes and container handlers. It also owns several hotels.
A key Liebherr characteristic is the amount of componentry that it manufactures itself. At Biberach, for example, there are not just tower cranes being produced, but a whole range of heavy metal components such as slewing rings for a range of Liebherr machinery. And the Nenzing factory in Austria includes an impressive electronics assembly room for the technology that monitors and controls the ship, mobile harbour and crawler cranes that are built at the factory.
Liebherr chooses to minimise outsourcing. Others might prefer to seek more value from the company by reversing this policy. On the other hand they may also experience a reduction in the level of quality and innovation.
Hans Liebherr himself, or ‘the old man’ as he is referred to by those in the factories who remember him from his fearsome unannounced impromptu swoops onto the shopfloor, died six years ago, but not before seeing his company firmly established as one of Europe’s leading privately-owned industrial groups. There are Liebherr companies all over the world, and the group remains heavily decentralised.
Private ownership does not seemed to have harmed Liebherr to date. Ownership of the company now rests with two of the five children of the founder – Willi Liebherr and Isolde Wagishauser, who comprise the presiding committee of Liebherr-International AG and maintain a close interest in the 50-plus operating companies that make up the highly decentralised group. The next generation of the family is now at or approaching college age and some or all, one assumes, will join the family firm within the next few years. They have been left an impressive legacy by their grandfather.
