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Historical data
The history of
the company Aerotechnik Siegwart is closely connected to the one of its founder
and managing director Emil Siegwart, born on December 31, 1919, in the little
village St. Nikolaus in the Saar region. When building small sailing boats,
model airplanes and balloons, he developed technical talent already at an early
age. He was supported by his elementary school teacher Dunsbach.
To develop
further, Emil Siegwart began the studies of mechanical engineering in 1938.
He
graduated three
years later. That was followed by the military service. Siegwart served in the
“Luftwaffe” and dealt with radio measuring. All too soon he was exempted of the
military service in order to drive forward the development of jet power plants
at the Heinkel Airplane Plant in Stuttgart.
After the end
of the war in 1945, the victorious power France took over the team of
specialists consisting of 140 engineers. From this time on, the team developed
jet power plants for the airplanes "Mirage" and "Caravelle". After four years in
France, Siegwart returned into the Saarland, which was administrated by France.
He joined the Mabag limited company, a small company acting in the domain of
ventilation technology. As technical manager and later on as executive
companion, Siegwart applied himself to the production of ventilation and
airconditioning systems, drying engines and the manufacturing technology
concerning the production of circular tubes. At this moment in time his untiring
inventive genious and persistent will appeared, resulting in about 300 patents
in the area of sheet metal forming and the successfully realised industrial
production. Important large-scale projects such as the ventilation technology of
the Olympic stadium in Munich were put into effect under the overall control of
Siegwart. His tireless entrepreneurial spirit and the intention to make progress
with the Mabag limited company resulted in 1971 in a joint-stock company
together with the Saarbergwerke AG (Saar Mine corp.) as majority shareholder. It
emerged that this was a basic error. Siegwart had to find out that the powerful
partner not only limited but also constricted his freedom of action and urge to
move forward. The inability to make decisions and the bureaucratic structure of
the company resulted in the failure of new concepts and business initiations.
In 1975 the
55-year-old Siegwart abandoned the Mabag limited company. But instead of
retiring – as most people do at this age – he founded the Aerotechnik Siegwart
limited company in Friedrichsthal/Saar together with his son Wolfgang, who just
before completed his degree in mechanical engineering at the Karlsruhe
University. At first they produced with 10 employees, among them some supporters
from the Mabag period, on an area of 500 m². Father and son, both managing
partners, together with their employees, took care of economic growth. While
Emil Siegwart devoted himself to the development of new products and procedures,
Wolfgang Siegwart cared about commercial direction as well as process control
and optimisation. Little by little, the product range was consistently expanded
and new assistants were employed, so that in 2000 the production area was 6000
m² and the staff was about 150. |
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In order to
enable delivery at short notice and adherence to delivery dates, a
computer-controlled high-rack warehouse with 3400 euro-pallet storing positions
for the time being was put into service in 1985/86. In future the high-rack
warehouse was expanded by further 1600 euro-pallet storing positions.
A special highlight in the year 1989 was the appliance of a “world-wide probably
unique laser installation“ (Dr Reinhard Wollermann-Windgasse, managing director
of the Trumpf laser technology limited company, Ditzingen; article on the
occasion of the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the Aerotechnik
Siegwart limited company, 14-01-2000). Emil Siegwart didn’t want to accept that
for the most part the power of the laser remained unused because of the
extremely short welding time. He provided the Trumpf laser specialists with the
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