13.11.2023 | Press release

Learning from each other is a guiding principle of business excellence at Rheinmetall. This long-term goal prompted Group subsidiary Pierburg Pump Technology GmbH in Hartha to take part once again in the assessment of the renowned “Initiative Ludwig Erhard Preis e. V.” in cooperation with the “Germany – Land of Ideas” initiative. Last year, the company took bronze. This year, they did even better, when their efforts earned them a silver German Prize for Excellence in summer at the Meistersaal, a former concert hall in Berlin. Pierburg Pump Technology managers and staff members were on hand to accept the prize, which recognizes the company’s holistic management system and the sustained success of its business activities.

In the words of Mario Schäfer, the local plant manager: “We’re proud that we did even better this year, taking silver in the Initiative Ludwig Erhard Preis e.V. contest. This accolade acknowledges the joint achievement of the men and women of our company and their terrific commitment and dependability. That’s how we moved up a rung to take silver. We want to keep investing steadily in the future viability of our company, in order to meet the high demand for applications "Made in Hartha". 

For the organizers, too, the award of the next-higher level of the prize is a tribute to the company’s active pursuit of its chosen path to growth, with special praise for the plant as a “profitable technology centre for innovative products and processes”. The employees are cognizant of the key figures and the underlying expectations of the plant.

For decades, the company has been a byword for innovative strength. The very first patented product developed at the Hartha plant, an electric water recirculation pump, proved to be a bestseller, with over 100 million units sold to date. The company’s strategy of tapping into future markets such as hydrogen technology and micro-mobility – e.g., industrialization of the company’s proprietary hydrogen recirculation blower – and achieving CO₂-neutral production by 2035, have set the stage for sustained success.

In order to further establish itself in the world of cutting-edge technology, a company’s cooperation with internal and external partners, supplier performance, the value-added chain, and attractiveness as an employer all have to be maintained and continuously optimized. The globally recognized responsibilities contained in the model underlying the prize systematically support adjusting the product portfolio in response to deep-running change in the mobility markets, helping to guide transformation and further improve profitability and innovative strength. The latest – and compared to last year’s accolade – even loftier prize awarded to the Rheinmetall Pierburg plant in Hartha testifies to the company’s continuous and sustained gains in the realm of business excellence.  

Pierburg Pump Technology GmbH is a subsidiary of publicly traded Rheinmetall AG, an integrated technology group with some 25,000 employees worldwide – a substantial, internationally successful enterprise serving multiple markets with a wide array of innovative products and services.

Forming part of Rheinmetall’s Sensors and Actuators division, Pierburg Pump Technology GmbH stands for outstanding expertise in thermal and fluid management applications in the mobility and industrial domain. Its core areas of activity are pollution reduction, e-motors, actuators, solenoid valves and water, oil and vacuum pumps. The company’s Pump Technology business unit focuses first and foremost on developing and producing innovative pumps and products for thermal management. With production and development facilities and its own application centres around the globe, the unit can respond quickly and flexibly to individual customer requirements. Products produced at the Hartha plant include advanced electric pumps and motors in different performance categories, designed for various tasks in and around the engine, some of which now feature in battery-powered vehicles as well. 

The purpose of the Initiative Ludwig Erhard Preis e.V. is to encourage excellence-driven thinking. The Initiative cooperates with "Germany — Land of Ideas“, a joint promotional campaign of the German government and German industry designed to heighten the visibility of outstanding business achievement in Germany. Ludwig Erhard, West Germany’s second federal chancellor and an early proponent of the country’s social market economy, believed in an economic order that “combined the principle of free enterprise with social equity and a moral responsibility of each individual to the whole [of society]” – a principle that has lost none of its force in the intervening decades. It is this concept that underlies the model of the Ludwig Erhard prize. Initiative Ludwig-Erhard-Preis e.V. evaluates the management of companies and organizations, awarding prizes for different levels of excellence as a partner of the European Foundation for Quality Management. Further information can be found at www.ilep.de.