news | Obituary
Engel announces the deaths of Schwarz guiding partners
Austrian injection machinery maker Engel announced the deaths of its two senior directors, Irene and Georg Schwarz, last month. The husband and wife team had headed the company for more than 30 years and oversaw its transition from an Austrian to a truly international enterprise.
Irene and Georg Schwarz were a remarkable couple with an equally remarkable history. While not the founders of the Engel business, they were both involved in it from its earliest days and can certainly be considered to have laid the foundations for what is today a €1.2bn operation with more than 5,000 people employed across nine manufacturing units in Europe, North America and Asia.
Born in what is now Vrbas in Serbia in 1929, Irene Engel moved to Austria in 1944 as a refugee. When her father Ludwig set up his machinery building company in Schwert-
Georg and Irene Schwarz steered Engel for more than 30 years
berg in 1945 she was one of its first employees, taking on the role of book-keeper. Georg Schwarz was born in Osijek in Croatia in 1928 and also moved to Upper Austria in 1945 as a refugee, where he trained as an engineer at the Technical School in Linz. He met, and in 1951 married, Irene and joined the Engel family business.
When Ludwig Engel died
suddenly in 1965, Irene and Georg took on the management of a business that then had 380 employees. However, they had a vision for Engel’s future
development as an interna- tional operation and set up its first overseas production plants in North America. They also set the company on the path to becoming a systems solutions provider rather than a simple machinery maker, establishing it in the 1980s as a developer and manufacturer of robotics. The sudden death of Irene’s
father meant the Schwarz’s elevation to lead the Engel business was somewhat unplanned and perhaps it is this that set their focus on planned succession for the future. By the time they
The Schwertberg HQ of Engel’s operations
stepped back from operational management in 1997 they had already put in place a highly effective third generation management team headed by their son-in-law Dr Peter Neumann, who oversaw the company’s establishment of production operations in Korea and China. Following his decision to step down later this year, the company is now implementing a similarly well planned transition to its fourth generation management team. Although the Schwarz’s had
stepped back from operational duties in 1997 they continued as active members of the board. When Engel’s headquar- ters operation at Schwertberg was badly flooded in 2002, for example, they were both heavily involved in a rebuilding project that saw it implement assembly line production techniques. Irene and Georg Schwarz
undoubtedly leave a lasting mark on Engel’s DNA. Irene was known for her focus on economy and financial security, implementing her own version of lean manufacturing and waste management. Georg was a technology enthusiast who demanded and fostered innovation from his engineers. Not one to fear new ideas, he was decisive in advancing the development of Engel’s tiebar-less technology (and in securing the patents that have kept it unique to the company). Irene Schwarz died on 24
March 2016 aged 86; Georg Schwarz died on 6 April 2016 aged 88.
10 INJECTION WORLD | May 2016
www.injectionworld.com
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