A Glider Factory is Born
Now - at the end of 2010 - this article is 10 years old. But it still is amusing to read, what we did a decade ago. We built a new factory and it is still the most modern glider company in the world - but there are so few only.....
!!
Gliders have been built in Bruchsal at Schollengarten since 1974 and our production buildings look like it. They have grown helter-skelter for decades around a central open space and now number seven buildings containing different parts of the production. It's especially bad in winter when you have to continually cross the open space in the middle to get from one section to another.
It has become so crowded that often damage occurs to wings and fuselages in moving these parts around. This results in very expensive repairs. You would expect to find a properly set up service area in a glider factory. But we have no room for one. When only one glider is in final assembly, there is not room for a second one.
Finally, we don't have an airfield in front of the factory door. Its a curious fact that none of the four glider manufacturers have an airport directly accessible to the factory that they can use without first disassembling the glider at the factory and then reassembling it at the airfield. Then after the test flight, the whole dance must be done in reverse. With German wages as high as they are, this is just not acceptable.
But who has the courage to make such a large investment in the face of low profits and all the other difficulties?
We'll risk it! We firmly believe in the future of our product and on the German production of gliders. So again it is necessary to “put up or shut up.”
Therefore, we now give notice that DG Flugzeugbau will build during the year 2000 the most modern glider factory in the world.
This finish date is expected to be the middle of December.
Production will begin in the new factory on the Bruchsal Airport at 7:00 a.m. on the eighth of January, 2001.
Since we have excellent experience with on-time finishing of aircraft
, we are very curious to see if we get the new factory when it was promised. The following story will show you how we came to this conclusion.
Here is sort of a “diary”:
Spring 1999.
It is becoming every day more obvious that this can't go on! We want to be still producing gliders 20 years from now, but the situation at Schollengarten with ever increasing production is becoming chaotic. What were the possibilities?
Because of defense pull-backs, more and more air bases are being closed. Would we like one of those? A 10,000 ft runway for our exclusive use with big hangars (50 ft high, uninsulated, exorbitant heating costs) cheap real estate and buildings (built in 1950 and in need of massive renovation, read: junk) help and encouragement from the state government? (“You would be the biggest investor here!”)
That plus fifty cents will buy you a cup of coffee!
Does that sound like a bargain?
Should we go to another state, for instance Mecklenburg or maybe Wheeze?
We asked around in our factory if anybody would be willing to move. The large majority said, “No” to moving to another state. Especially when no proper Swain spaetzle would be available.
So we have to ask ourselves what is the value of our plant? Its not only the blueprints and the moulds for high performance gliders, it also includes the value of the experience of our employees.
If we lost 2/3 of them, especially the very best who could get jobs elsewhere, then we would be back at the beginning where we were in 1997.
We can't do that!
So on a beautiful spring day we toured five airports in the neighborhood of Bruchsal to look at the possibilities. The Rhine River was in flood stage and two of the airports were under water. One was much too expensive, one was in a city whose mayor was uninterested in our coming, and the last was too far away and looked very run down.
No possibilities there!
Naturally we were in contact with Mayor Bernhard Doll of Bruchsal during all this. We were making progress there! I can still hear his response to us.
“You may not leave Bruchsal! Every job that is lost here will never be replaced.”
Soon we had a place to build. We have land next to the entrance road to the airport which only required building a small bridge over a brook. This land was zoned as farm land but the zoning board allowed us to use it because there was no place else to go. Changing the building plans, use of the land, permission from the Nature Protection Society? No problem, as long as DG stays in Bruchsal. Willing co-operation from the city of Bruchsal and the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg!
When I think of my home city of Bielefeld - they never could have got their act together!
But the land belonged to the Catholic Church who are allowed by their own rules to take land as a gift, for instance from an estate, but may never sell a bit of it. I did not want to lease the land. A three-way swap was arranged:
The City of Bruchsal gave the Church another piece of land of equal value, the Church gave the city the land that we wanted, and the city can then sell it to us.
Now guess what the Church got in exchange for 4.6 acres of land that was zoned for farming? No! Not an equal amount of farmland elsewhere, rather 4.6 acres of commercial land in the city from which they can have a much better income. The deal could not have been made any other way. The transaction even received the blessing of the Bishop.
What did we learn from this? An institution that has been in business for 2,000 years knows how to deal.
This is our future manufacturing site: 
The entrance is directly from the autobahn with only one turn-off and then it circles our buildings and is visible from the entrance to the airport. We will be able to pull our gliders out of the assembly building, over the little bridge, directly to the airfield. The runway is in the upper right hand corner of the picture.
That's the way it should be!
You can see two high tension lines crossing the land. That doesn't look so good but do you believe in “electro-smog”? It will never be noticed in a closed and well grounded steel building.
Autumn 1999:
A land requirement plan was made. What do we now have, what do we want to achieve, how much land do we need? From this the first architectural plans could be made.
January 2000:
Our architect, with whom I have worked before on other buildings, finished the plans and took them to the City Engineering and Building Office for approval. There were many, many meetings about the division of space in the new buildings. The important part of the plan depends on production facilities. All of the employees have been encouraged to bring in suggestions.
The result is that every one of them “builds” his own workstation. One wants an additional wall, the next one wants special dust protection, the third wants special lighting, etc. etc. Who knows better than our employees the best way to fit out their own workplace?
The approval of the plans should be made in the middle of March. But we're not planning to start until the first of May so there's no rush.
An exciting year 2000 lays ahead of us!
- friedel weber - March 2000 -
translated by David Noyes, Ohio 
May, 2000:
Even if the local newspaper said the first spade full would be turned on the 1st of May, there is, in fact, nothing to be seen at the building site at the end of May.
The doesn't matter because the contracts have all been let out and steel beams are being finished beforehand.
The foundation was started on the 29th of May.
The topsoil was pushed to one side and about 15,000 tons of rock and gravel were brought in.
Its started..................
August 2000
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September 2000
From midst of September the construction work speeds up!
Three big hydraulic cranes and two lifts bring the prefabricated steel- and concrete parts to the building.
You can see how it is growing:
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Beginning October:
The complete steel skeleton is ready.
An impressive picture out of our glider!
......this is a panoramic view which you can enlarge:
30. October 2000
It's going on very fast:
- The steel work is nearly done,
- the roof is ready,
- the windows are built in.
Everybody's first impression:
Huge!
Midst of November:
The parts for the air ventilation system
For the future we have another out landing field:
Beginning December:
Not too bad, isn't it?
And the best thing is: It will be ready in time!
December 21st, 2000
At the last minute, it looked like we would not be completely finished and that we would not be able to hold to the Christmas celebration schedule. The building began to take on a very finished look in the last weeks. Only when the painters wanted to paint the walls where the electricians were not yet finished because the wall plaster was not yet dry, then it really got hectic!
The finishers worked so late into the evenings and on Saturdays that they didn't go home on the weekends.
On the 21st of December the floors were swept while one of the workers was sanding the flooring joints......, The painter used fast drying paint on the toilet doors so that our visitors would not stick to them....., our volunteers decorated for the celebration, and then, two hours before the beginning of the festivities the new DG Factory was -
finished!
It was a wonderful cornerstone laying, topping out, dedication,
and factory Christmas party!
This is the end of the report, how a glider factory was born.
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For the very first time at March, 17th, 2000 I announced during the SSA Convention in Albuquerque , that we are going to build a new factory.
The production should start Jan. 8th, 2001 - 7.00 o'clock.
And exactly it happened!
- friedel weber Jan. 2001 -
translated by David Noyes, Ohio
- friedel weber - 
our Bridge is ready!
With a delay of more or less one year our bridge is ready now. So we can taxi directly from our hangar to the airfield.
And because in Germany everything has to be ruled by the authorities the meadow behind the bridge will be upgraded to a "Taxiway" and the area in front of our hangar will be similar to an aircraft parking space. All this will be published in the German AIP!
Probably we will have to lacquer our garden trolley (for pulling the gliders) in yellow and black and have to send Wilhelm Dirks to an education as "Follow-Me-Driver".......
Well - we have it!
DG Flugzeugbau has a new landmark
A complete pair of wings had to be discarded since they didn't pass our stringent quality control.
All fittings were removed, the flaperons fixed with epoxy and the surface coated with an extra thick layer of polyurethane paint.
Now everybody can recognize even from the distance what is crafted here all day long.
Our workers layed the concrete foundation themselves and are proud that the wings stand straight upright.
Remember, who is an "artist" with the resin brush is not afraid to pour 300 cubic feet (8.5 cubic meter) concrete!
- Dec 2003 -
