Draxlmaier fired 9,000 because it needs engineers, not production workers

German company Lisa Draxlmaier, one of the leading manufacturers of auto parts in Romania and up until last year the biggest employer in the sector, announced it would continue investments on the Romanian market with an 8 million-euro budget in 2010 in order to increase automation of the plants.

“Romania is no longer a low-cost country, now it is medium-cost. Now we want to integrate operations from engineering through to the end product. The idea is that we want to make more complicated products with fewer people and come up with new projects,” said Ferdinand Zilcher, administrative manager of Draxlmaier Romania.

The change has brought about, in addition to the reduction in turnover to 120 million euros in 2009 from 186 million euros a year before, the layoff of around 9,000 people in the last three years, so the biggest employer in the automotive sector could lose the no. 1 spot in 2010 to tyre and automotive components producer Continental.

The company’s investments will be directed towards new equipment and process automation in 2010, as manual work will gradually be eliminated from the production flows.