The resistance that faced me was relentless. I soothed, argued, and cajoled, but noone was willing to listen. All I wanted was the best! A well-known German carmaker had resolutely decided to build sections of the body of its mid-range model from a new, better steel. The problem was that this steel was far too hard for all the production processes used to date. Yet the head of the tool shop didn’t want to know anything at all about “my” laser system, preferring instead to tweak the previous processes in some way – which was virtually impossible from a technical point of view.

There was only one person I could persuade to at least take a look at the laser system in Ditzingen, and it took several grueling days before he was convinced. Finally, we were allowed to set up a test system at the customer’s site. My heart beat faster – and seemed to suddenly stop. Because in 24/7 operation, the hard steel still brought our new system to its knees and the project was in danger of collapsing. Together with our application engineers and developers, we worked extra shifts and tinkered with the system until it was ready for the tough conditions of series production.

Countless conversations went through my head day in and day out back then and caused more than one sleepless night. Today, we sell more than 200 of these systems a year to the automotive industry.