Bosch 125 years Invented for life

Bosch 125 years Invented for life
Bosch 125 years
Invented for life
6
Foreword
8
Robert Bosch
28
Chronology
30
1886 – 1900 The Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electrical Engineering
46
1901 – 1923 The emergence of a global automotive supplier
64
1924 – 1945 From automotive supplier to diversified corporate group
84
1946 – 1959 Reconstruction and the economic miracle
100
1960 – 1989 Creation of the divisions and the rise of automotive
electronics
124
1990 – 2011 Meeting the challenges of globalization
152
Associates and working environments
174
Corporate social responsibility
192
Appendix
194
Robert Bosch and his successors
198
Locations worldwide
202
Sales revenue and associates, 1886 – 2010
206
Milestones
212
The Bosch Group
214
Picture credits
Chronology
When Robert Bosch and his two associates
opened a “Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electrical Engineering” in Stuttgart
in November 1886, no one could have
guessed that, 125 years later, Bosch would
be employing more than 280,000 associates worldwide. The transition from a small
skilled-trades workshop to a global technology and services company was neither easy
nor always linear. The company had to
overcome severe economic and political
difficulties. But despite these difficulties,
the company’s history was also marked by
success and by pioneering technical
achievements. Today, Bosch is an international byword for quality and innovation,
as well as a model of corporate social
responsibility. The story of how the company grew from humble beginnings to its
present status is an extraordinary and
exciting one.
1902
1921
1942
1922
1943
1903
1923
1944
1965 1966 1967
1904
1905
1906
1907
1924
1925
1926
1927
1908
1928
1909
1929
1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951
1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974
1910
1930
1952
1975
1911
1931
1953
1976
1912
1932
1954
1977
1913
1933
1914
1934
1915
1935 1936
1916
1937
1917
1938
1918
1919
1920
1939 1940 1941
1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964
1978
1979 1980
1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987
1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
1886–1900
1901–1923
1924–1945
1946–1959
1960–1989
1990–2011
1886– 1900
The Workshop for
­Precision Mechanics
and Electrical
Engineering
1886–1900
1901–1923
1924–1945
“A shambles” ‒
starting a business
Right: The courtyard-entrance workshop on the ground floor of the building
at 75B Rotebühlstrasse in Stuttgart.
Here, Robert Bosch set up his small
shop for skilled trades in 1886. In 1890,
he moved to a larger workshop at 9
Gutenbergstrasse.
Previous page: Robert Bosch and his
master craftsman Arnold Zähringer
developed a new type of magneto
ignition device in 1897. No one had
previously been able to make a magneto
­ignition device that was safe and reliable
enough for use in vehicle engines.
R
obert Bosch knew very early on that he wanted to set up his own
business. During his years in the U.S. and the U.K., he often mentioned his plans for the future in letters to his wife-to-be Anna ­Kayser.
And yet, in the spring of 1886, he was still unsure whether he should set
up the business on his own or with a friend. The question of location was
something else that occupied his thoughts. In the end, because the business prospects were positive, Robert Bosch finally decided on Stuttgart.
His fiancée’s home in Obertürkheim was also nearby. The initial capital
stock of 10,000 German marks came from Bosch’s savings and his inheritance from his father, who had died six years earlier.
On the bright late-autumn day of November 11, 1886, Robert Bosch
and his first two associates – a mechanic and an errand boy – set up a workshop in a courtyard-entrance building at 75B Rotebühlstrasse in Stuttgart.
The “Workshop for Precision Mechanics and Electrical Engineering” had
an office, one larger and one smaller workshop, and a room with a small
forge. But Robert Bosch still had to wait for official permission before he
could open for business. That permission was granted four days later,
on November 15, 1886. Ever since, this date has been regarded as the day
the company was founded.
Robert Bosch did all the precision-mechanical and electrical-engineering work that came his way. For the most part, this involved installing
low-voltage equipment such as telephone terminals, electric bells, door
openers, remote electrical water-level indicators, and later pneumatic
tube pipelines and electric lighting. Yet despite this extensive portfolio,
orders were often sparse during the early years, leaving Bosch struggling
to keep his workforce busy and pay their wages. Still, he wanted to do the
32
1946–1959
1960–1989
1990–2011
8
1
2
3
smaller workshop
5
5
larger workshop
9
6
4
office
7
10
33
entrance hall
1 anvil
2 forge
3 tool cabinet
4 grindstone
5 stove
6 lathe
7workbench with
double vise
8 telephone
9 desk and chair
10 lectern
1886–1900
1901–1923
Right: In the early years of his business,
Robert Bosch installed all types of
precision-mechanical and electrical
devices. The pictures show four
examples from the period 1888 –1900
(clockwise from top left): advertisement
for cigar holders, a pneumatic capsule
pipeline, the contact mechanism of a
remote electrical water-level indicator,
and a Braille typewriter.
1924–1945
best he could by them. In addition, he needed more capital to invest in
modern equipment for his workshop. He therefore borrowed money from
his mother and took out loans for which his family acted as guarantor.
Robert Bosch later referred to his initial years in business as “a shambles.”
The year 1892 was particularly difficult for the new business. A lack of
orders forced Robert Bosch to let go of 22 of his 24 associates.
The cornerstone of success –
magneto ignition devices for stationary engines
Construction of the Stuttgart electricity works in 1895 helped change the
young company’s fortunes, with Robert Bosch landing new contracts
to install equipment. He was also already producing magneto ignition
devices – products that he would soon begin refining even further. These
devices generated an electric spark to ignite the air-fuel mixture in the cylinder of a stationary internal-combustion engine. Robert Bosch had come
across the invention more or less by chance. In 1887, a mechanical engineer had asked him to reproduce a magneto ignition device he had seen
on an engine at a company in Schorndorf. Robert Bosch was happy to take
up the challenge. He made his way to Schorndorf, some 20 miles east of
­Stuttgart, to study the design of the gadget himself.
The engine was equipped with a device produced by the Colognebased company Deutz, a maker of internal-combustion engines. After
contacting Deutz and ascertaining that the magneto was not patented,
Robert Bosch set about reproducing it. The very first Bosch ignition device
34
1946–1959
1960–1989
1990–2011
35
1886–1900
1901–1923
36
1924–1945
1946–1959
1960–1989
Left: The technician Richard Schyle
worked for Bosch from 1891 to 1930.
He is pictured here in 1909, using a
model to demonstrate how the first
Bosch magneto ignition device worked.
1990–2011
was duly delivered to Schmehl & Hespelt, a mechanical engineering company situated to the north of Stuttgart in the small town of Möckmühl, on
October 8, 1887. But Robert Bosch did not limit himself to simply reproducing the magneto ignition device; he also refined it, true to his later guiding
principle of continuous improvement. He replaced the bar magnets with
U-shaped ones, not only making the new device lighter and less prone to
failure, but also enhancing its performance.
Over the next few years, Bosch manufactured the magneto ignition
device in increasing – albeit still small – quantities. In 1888 he delivered
nine units, but by 1891 he was making more than 100, with the magneto
ignition device now accounting for over 50 percent of the workshop’s sales.
“No botching or bungling was permitted” ‒
life at the workshop
The rules of the workshop were strict. Robert Bosch demanded a great
deal from his workers, but also made sure that working conditions were
good. Knowing that an associate could not produce high-quality products
using an outmoded workbench and poor tools, he continually invested in
new machinery.
In other ways, too, Robert Bosch was a tradesman more in today’s mold.
To enable his customers to reach him at any time, he rented a telephone –
a very expensive investment at 150 German marks a year. A subscription
to the “Centralblatt für Elektrotechnik” trade journal kept him up to date on
the latest industry developments. He also printed brochures and placed
37
1886–1900
1901–1923
1924–1945
1946–1959
1960–1989
Left: From 1890 onward, Robert
Bosch used a modern safety bicycle
to visit his customers. It not only got
him there faster, but also saved him
money on tram fares.
Top: Robert Bosch generally invested
the meager profits of his early years
in new workshop equipment. In 1887,
he purchased a foot-operated lathe,
which was also used to produce parts
for the first magneto ignition devices.
1990–2011
advertisements in the press to spread the word about his workshop.
To visit his customers, Robert Bosch used a safety bicycle, a precursor to
the bikes we know today and an extremely rare sight in Germany at the time.
It not only got him to his customers faster, but also saved him money on
tram fares. The unusual two-wheeler also attracted a lot of attention in
Stuttgart and was thus an inexpensive way of advertising his business.
Robert Bosch had high standards when selecting new associates.
Adolf Krauss joined the company as a technician in 1898. Looking back
after 25 years of service, he said: “Robert Bosch personally assessed each
applicant to see whether they worked hard and had the necessary skills. No
botching or bungling was permitted in the Bosch workshop.” If Robert Bosch
observed any associates being careless or wasting materials, he was quick
to take them to task. Longtime associates like Gottlob Honold knew how to
deal with this direct approach. He said that, from time to time, it was as if
“a storm raged through the entire place” but “the skies soon cleared and peace
was restored thanks to the good personal relationship between employer and
employees.”
39
1886–1900
1901–1923
Right: It was especially in demanding
applications that Bosch magneto ignition
devices demonstrated their high quality
and performance. The Bosch low-voltage
magneto ignition device provided a
safe and reliable form of ignition for
Count Zeppelin’s first airship, the LZ 1,
in 1900.
1924–1945
Richard Schyle, who worked at Bosch from 1891 to 1930, describes in his
memoirs the cheerful and pleasant working atmosphere at the workshop. He relates, for example, that on one particular summer’s day when
the heat in the workshop had become unbearable, Robert Bosch made a
spur-of-the-moment decision to close down shop and give his staff the day
off. The associates also enjoyed singing while they worked. Robert Bosch
liked their singing so much that he generally stayed in his office to listen
to them, knowing that his sudden appearance in the workshop might put
them off. In 1896, Robert Bosch and his associates went on an excursion
to an inn near Stuttgart to celebrate the assembly of the 1,000th magneto
ignition device. By that time, the ignition device accounted for the majority of the company’s sales. Even so, no one had any inkling that this product would soon be the medium that would make the Bosch name famous
the world over.
The “trickiest problem”
in engine design
The first magneto ignition devices had one major drawback. Their design
made them suitable only for low-speed stationary engines, such as those
used to drive machinery in factories. But they did not work in the smaller,
high-speed kind of engines installed in new motor vehicles such as motorized coaches, motorcycles, and three-wheelers. At the time, the only
option here was to use alternative ignition systems – systems which were
neither reliable nor safe.
40
1946–1959
1960–1989
1990–2011
1886–1900
1901–1923
1924–1945
The Bosch brand
No company can achieve success without a strong brand. Even the
very first magneto ignition devices had the Bosch logotype emblazoned
on their brass bases in clear capital letters – almost like the typeface
used today. The Bosch symbol is the armature in a circle, a simplified
representation of the core of the magneto ignition device. The symbol
was sketched by Gottlob Honold, then head of development, in November 1918, just a few weeks after Bosch had forfeited the rights to its old
symbol in the United States following the first world war. Copyrighted
internationally in 1920, this armature in a circle, together with the
Bosch logotype, significantly enhanced the profile of the company’s
products. Today, more than 90 years later, the armature in a circle
remains the visual representation of the Bosch brand.
Right: In 1897, Robert Bosch and his
master craftsman Arnold Zähringer
successfully installed a magneto
­ignition device in a motor vehicle for
the first time. A three-wheeler of the
type made by the French manufacturer
De Dion-Bouton was the first motor
vehicle to be equipped with Bosch
ignition.
One of the people searching for a better ignition system at that time was
Frederick Richard Simms, a pioneer of the British automotive ­industry.
His search eventually led him to Robert Bosch. In 1897, Simms sent a
motorized three-wheeler of the type made by the French manufacturer
De Dion-­Bouton to Stuttgart to have a magneto ignition device installed
in place of its standard buzzer ignition. Doubting Simms’s claim that the
engine could run at some 600 revolutions per minute, Bosch and his master craftsman Arnold Zähringer decided to test it for themselves. As it happened, the only person brave enough to undertake the first test run on this
unusually speedy machine was Max Rall, an apprentice who later became
a member of the board of management. He promptly crashed into a stack
of empty wine barrels belonging to the neighboring wine merchant Hirsch.
A further attempt on the open road revealed that the engine was actually
capable of reaching around 1,800 rpm.
It was clear that a conventional magneto ignition device would never
be able to handle engine speeds of this kind. But Robert Bosch and his
associates did not give up that easily. In the end, Zähringer had an ingenious idea. He decided that the heavy armature did not have to oscillate at
all. Instead, he assigned this task to a new part – a light and slender sleeve.
This allowed the magneto ignition device to function at high speeds. It was
an astonishingly simple solution for what Carl Benz had once called the
“trickiest problem” in engine design. For Bosch, this safe and reliable solution for automobiles was the international breakthrough.
42
1946–1959
1960–1989
1990–2011
The novel design of the Bosch lowvoltage magneto ignition device was
based on a simple idea. The heavy
armature did not have to turn at high
speeds: instead, this could be left to
a small, light sleeve inside the device.
For the first time, it was now possible to use a magneto as the ignition
system in small, high-speed motor
vehicle engines.
43
1886–1900
1901–1923
44
1924–1945
1946–1959
1960–1989
1990–2011
Bosch goes international ‒
the first sales offices
Left: In May 1910, the London-based
Bosch Magneto Company relocated
from Store Street to Newman Street.
Together with his British partner
­Frederick Simms, Robert Bosch had
set up a sales office in the U.K. in 1898.
This was the company’s first sales
office outside Germany.
This innovation opened up a whole new customer base for Bosch: auto-
Top: The Vienna-based company
Dénes & Friedmann marketed Bosch
products in Austria and Hungary
from 1899. In 1905, on the title page
of its catalog, the company extolled
the virtues of Bosch magneto ignition
systems to drivers.
first office. Just one year later, branch offices were opened in France and
makers and drivers around the world. Instead of the old, fault-prone ignition technology, many drivers wanted to have the new electric ignition
system from Bosch. To serve the company’s customers in other countries
without having to use long supply routes, Bosch set up local sales offices –
the first of them in the U.K. in 1898. Frederick Simms, who had previously
sent Robert Bosch the motorized three-wheeler, was put in charge of this
­Austria-Hungary – the first steps toward a worldwide sales network. The
consistent buildup of an international presence in the years that followed
was one of the main reasons for the company’s rapid rise and success.
45