Making it better Atlas

MAKING IT BETTER

The order books are full at Atlas GmbH, the German specialist in cranes, excavators and allied technologies. But, as Felicity Landon reports, it is the drive to increase productivity that is the ongoing story.

IN 2010, Fil Filipov was confirmed as the buyer of Atlas Cranes & Excavators from Terex. As the sole shareholder in Atlas Maschinen GmbH, which acquired the Atlas business, he confirmed that the new company would be headquartered at the Atlas crane plant in Delmenhorst in Germany and he would serve as the chairman of Atlas Maschinen Group.

Atlas would continue manufacturing excavators in its Ganderkesee plant, cranes in its Delmenhorst plant, and hydraulic cylinders and other components in its Vechta plant, he said. And he successfully reintroduced the Atlas name and colour, a move welcomed by the company’s extensive dealer network.

However, there was soon conflict on the factory floors as he began implementing changes in his mission to turn a struggling business around. Terex had more or less given Atlas away, feeling that the cost of closing the plant or restructuring to make it profitable was too much in both management time and financial terms. The belief was that an independent owner would be better placed to tackle the changes needed.

Hence the arrival of Fil Filipov, an entrepreneur born in Bulgaria, who has lived in the USA since the 1960s and owns several companies around the world.

Mr Filipov is no stranger to tough turnarounds and, as one publication put it, “is not noted for his delicate or slow approach; he does know, though, that if he is to make the most of what is potentially a strong business with a good product range and strong brand name, he needs to make significant changes to working practices at the plant.”

This summer, Mr Filipov has repeatedly warned that he may close down production at Delmenhorst altogether, relocating production to the other two German plants – because, he says, productivity at Delmenhorst is not high enough to justify the costs, and also because of the ongoing dispute with the works council, which he says ‘does not cooperate with management’.

Such a closure is ‘still not off the table’, he told a local newspaper, and if it became necessary ‘it could go very fast’.

This year has also seen his decision to manage the complete spare parts business as an independent company, Atlas Spare Parts GmbH. This has enabled him to restructure and negotiate new pay deals with employees; the same process is planned for Atlas Sales GmbH.

In an interview, he said that the mood in the factories is ‘certainly not the best’.

“But in the end, all of us are not here to like each other. We are here to do a job and to make progress.”

In fact, he said, 85 per cent of the employees are behind him. He has invested heavily in production capability and capacity, and the company has six to nine months of work in advance. “Atlas is a good company,” he said.

Customer-driven

Atlas manufactures a very wide range of equipment for the construction, railroad, material handling and infrastructure industries. The company’s roots go back to 1919 when Hinrich Weyhausen started selling construction and agricultural machinery. He discovered that the machines his customers actually needed were not available. So he listened carefully and then went about building the machines himself, exactly according to the requirements of the people who used them every day.

Weyhausen was a pioneer with the focus always on the benefit of the machines and, says Atlas, nothing has changed in terms of that ideal. “We produce robust equipment to enable our customers to work more effectively and safer than ever before.”

The Atlas range of cranes for trucks is split into small (13 to 56kNm), offering lightweight, slimline, simple solutions for applications such as landscaping and moving building materials; medium (65 to 240kNm), flexible, compact, sensitive equipment for landscaping, building materials, grabbing, material handling and other applications; and large (250 to 620kNm), offering precision and reach, alongside lift capacity and including special features such as load sensing system, twin slewing gear and continuous slewing gear, for building material, lifting logistics, container logistics and assembly work.

Atlas excavators are marketed in mobile, material handling, crawler and railroad ranges. The mobile excavators are the all-purpose machines for road construction and underground engineering work, being exceptionally strong, solid and mobile and operable in virtually all kinds of conditions. Material handling excavators include mobile industrial machines and industrial tracked machines, which work on applications such as scrap, wood, bulky goods, special recycling, port applications and vacuum operations.

In crawler excavator segments, Atlas offers maximum digging performance, large loads and superior tear-out and break-away forces, based on excellent kinematics. And for the railroad sector, its excavators are adaptable and flexible, with the new computer-aided CARSY system ensuring optimal contact pressure with the rails. These can be used for a variety of applications, from cutting works to dismantling and upgrading railway track.

Atlas’s other capabilities include cylinders with diameters of 40 to 250mm and lengths up to 4000mm, and steel fabrications such as ditch clearing buckets, cactus grabs, buckets, demolition grapples, clamshell grabs, skeleton buckets, telescopic beam segments, lift arms and flow lines. The company’s in-house expertise also includes machining, painting and blasting.

“Atlas will make you strong with excellent products and a comprehensive service,” said a spokesman. n