Intelligence for All Wheel Drive - Haldex

Bär has designed its own compact unit that fits neatly
into the main supporting beam. Haldex will make 80
percent of the units, Bär makes the other 20 percent
from Haldex components.
addition, we offer features as standard that others offer as
extras, such as the plug-and-play electrical interface.”
But high quality is not always rewarded, and Gerd Bär
admits that, in the past, the company tended to suffer from
a problem typically found among medium-sized German
engineering manufacturers: Products are made to please
the engineers and not necessarily the customers. “I’m
a technical man, and I tend sometimes to be a bit of an
extremist, but I’d say you could see a change in ideology
[within Bär] from around 1998, and a change in practice
from around 2002,” he says. 1998 was when Gerd Bär’s
son Tobias began to be involved in the strategy of the company.
He became joint managing director in 2002. “Initially
he was given certain areas of responsibility,” explains
Gerd Bär. “He then extended his range until he took over
everything last year.”
Tobias Bär has helped the company produce products
that are competitive throughout Europe, says his father. In
the past, the company concentrated on the German-speaking
world, but now its Web site is in seven languages. Subsidiaries
in the Czech Republic and Poland have a been a
big success, and the Russian market seems to be booming.
It is planning to increase production from 11,900 units in
10 Haldex Dynamix 1/2007
The plug-and-play electrical interface is offered as
standard.
2006 to 13,800 this year. Petermann says that this is only
partly due to the company’s growth: “We are dependent
also on the level of the economy, and the current growth is
helping us a lot,” he says.
“We orient our work towards the standards of the vehicle
manufacturers,” says Gerd Bär. “We have the same understanding
of logistics and quality as they do. A lift is an integral
part of a vehicle. It may represent a small proportion of
the value, but if it fails, the vehicle can’t be used. We take
that responsibility very seriously.” �
www.haldex.com