Managing Director Claas Durach on the development and next steps of L.I.T. Automotive Solutions GmbH
“Considering the short period since our founding, we have already achieved several milestones,” Claas
Durach reveals in an interview. The Managing Director reports on the beginnings, the development, and the next steps for L.I.T. Automotive Solutions GmbH.
Mr. Durach, in 2022, the L.I.T. Group consolidated its Contract Logistics expertise for the Automotive sector by founding L.I.T Automotive Solutions GmbH. What was the reason for this?
Claas Durach: In the automotive sector, several key factors play a decisive role. This primarily includes the special requirement profile of our customers, which demands a high degree of expertise. To be able to offer tailor-made solutions, it was necessary as a first step to consolidate and further expand our competencies, which were previously partly scattered across various projects. Therefore, we decided to establish our own specialized company to fully integrate our know-how in automotive logistics from the corporate group into Automotive Solutions.
We have created our own resources, particularly in the areas of quality and process management, but also across project management, calculation, and implementation. These are now available to our customers on demand to meet their individual requirements. The already established customer structure in the automotive sector was another advantage for us. This allowed us a smooth entry into Contract Logistics, and we were able to offer our customers diversified service solutions from the outset.
What exactly does the service portfolio include?
Durach: Currently, our focus is on sequencing and assembly services. We ensure that special vehicle parts can be manufactured according to our customers' production requirements. Nowadays, a high degree of customization is possible for new cars, starting with the paint color and extending to decorative trims. This means that the manufacturer places special demands on the supplying service providers, which result from the manufacturer's planned vehicle production.
Our task is, therefore, to ensure that the required parts and components are delivered “just in time” to our customer's production line in the correct quantity and quality. In addition to timely production supply, we also ensure that components are provided “just in sequence” in the exact order required for vehicle construction. Besides our activities in sequencing and assembly, we also provide classic quality services such as component inspections in the nanometer range. This guarantees the correct properties of the parts we inspect. We also ensure that the necessary parts are available in time for vehicle assembly during the production process. Similarly, the handling of export shipping processes is among our core competencies.
How has the business developed to date?
Durach: Our ambition is to achieve growth of between 20 and 30 percent each year and to acquire several million euros in new customer business annually. We have now achieved this in the first two financial years and intend to continue this course. To this end, we have brought additional expertise into the team, expanded our existing Locations in Eisenach and Zwickau, and established new branches in Bremen, Leipzig, and Regensburg to be able to operate more effectively in projects. Considering the relatively short period since our founding, we have therefore already achieved several milestones.
What challenges were there during this period?
Durach: We founded Automotive Solutions during the Corona pandemic. The market environment was correspondingly difficult because our customers were frequently affected by supply bottlenecks. Therefore, individual plants were completely shut down, meaning we could not provide our services for weeks, sometimes even months. The shutdown of operations, but also the restart, being able to provide a certain capacity with the usual quality and meeting manufacturers' demands for consistent quality, was a huge challenge for us. Employee recruitment, in particular, was challenging at that time. We had to hire new employees and train them in the shortest possible time under adverse circumstances to serve our customers with the accustomed high quality.
How many employees do you currently employ?
Durach: In our central and cross-location organizational unit, twelve employees currently work, responsible for our daily business. In addition, over 300 colleagues work for us, whom we employ distributed across the production supplies of our Locations in Brake, Bremen, Eisenach, Leipzig, Zwickau, Kassel, and Regensburg in direct proximity to our customers. Recently, colleagues from the Wolfsburg and Baden-Baden Locations have also joined the team through the acquisition of Gübau Logistics GmbH.
For all our projects, we rely on a strong team – entirely in line with our L.I.T. mission statement: “Together for Success.” Our colleagues have diverse backgrounds, which is why we place great importance on multilingual communication during work: for example, through our IT systems, but also internal communication is conducted in several languages to fully involve every employee. This also benefits our customers. This way, we can meet regularly changing customer requirements and scale capacities.
What is the next step for Automotive Solutions?
Durach: At the Locations established so far, we aim to generate constant utilization. This has already worked well in Leipzig and Bremen. In March 2023, we opened a new Location in Regensburg, where we are also pursuing this goal. In addition to the overarching goal of growing in terms of revenue and profit, we also want to map out further services and create lighthouse projects – beyond our reference projects in sequencing and assembly – in the area of production and spare parts supply. We are well on our way to achieving this and see great growth opportunities in these areas.