Passion
for details

Hager Group small-scale manufacturing produces highly customised products for individual customers. These products range from exclusive switches and smart cable management right through to custom-made door intercom systems. Ralph Bertelt, Senior Vice President Offer Management Residential at Hager Group, explains the approach of small-scale manufacturing and what it has in common with the designer Charles Eames.

Our products and solutions are just as individual as our customers’ ideas.

Mr. Bertelt, lots of brands offer their customers specially engineered products. What makes Hager Group small-scale manufacturing different to the rest?

Something very specific, we manufacture customised products from across the whole spectrum of smart electrical installations. We can provide you with every product custom-designed to your specifications, in a universal design and from a single source; from switches and operating controls through to cable management systems and door communication systems. For customers, this translates into a single contact, reliable delivery times and manageable costs.

Who does an offer like this appeal to?

My counter question would be “who doesn’t find it an appealing prospect to express their own individual tastes?” Nowadays, more and more people are following the trend of not following trends. And we can offer them highly customised products from Hager, Berker and Elcom; they can come up with their own ideas and concepts.

So ultimately it’s all about the details.

That’s right, we now place just as much emphasis on these supposedly minor details as many of our customers do. What was it that the designer Charles Eames once said? “Details aren’t just details, they make the product.” And our small-scale manufacturing unit devotes a considerable amount of passion to these details.

How does small-scale manufacturing operate?

In recent years, we have had some good experiences in small-batch and small-series production with our self-contained small-scale manufacturing operations for each of the three brands Hager, Berker and Elcom. We’re now merging them together to offer interested parties tailor-made solutions from across our whole product range. We will be providing solutions which are perfectly adapted to individual requirements in terms of colour, surface, design and technical functionality.

We use state-of-the-art machinery to manufacture highly customised products. And we always give them a personal finishing touch.

Which target groups does the small-scale manufacturing unit cater to?

We target three major groups. Firstly, house builders who want to fit out their houses or apartments according to their own personal tastes. A second group of interested parties includes office and hotel planners who want their design standards to be reflected in equally ambitious interior electrical fittings. Architects, on the other hand, greatly appreciate not having to go to three different manufacturers for custom-made switches, cable ducts and door intercom systems because their surfaces and technical details may all turn out to be different. They like the fact that they can get everything from a single source.

Ralph Bertelt
Senior Vice President Offer Management Residential

Can you give us an example of some Hager Group small-scale manufacturing solutions?

Where required, we can produce switches with exclusively designed surfaces and a distinctive logo. We can also supply you with the matching cable duct and identical door communication system, too. The number of units is becoming less and less important. With our technical equipment, we are now able to produce modified components, for instance, in next to no time in batch sizes as low as one. When we don’t produce the required component ourselves because we don’t produce any access control systems for example, we use the best possible suppliers the market has to offer. We supply our customers with end-to-end solutions where everything works perfectly from day one rather than with disconnected partial solutions for which they have to search the market to find the missing components.

Of course, all that comes at a cost.

It stands to reason that a customised product is more expensive than an off-the-shelf product. After all, a lot of extra time and passion has gone into it. We don’t operate in the luxury sector, rather in the premium business sector. Our motto is “We need to move away from niche products towards purely business products”. We are democratising concepts about small-scale manufacturing. Many interested parties are surprised by how straightforwardly we can turn their ideas into a reality.

How does the small-scale manufacturing process work?

Remarkably simply, let your Hager sales representative know your requirements. They will then coordinate with production specialists who have all the right answers to your specific requests.