25 years Technical Offices in Jena and Berlin, Germany
Specialized expertise meets individual support on-site
Figure 1: The nationwide service network guarantees close proximity to customers
With six Technical Offices all across Germany, Shimadzu offers a comprehensive sales and service network in regional catchment areas. In two cities, Berlin and Jena, the Shimadzu offices celebrate their 25th anniversary this year. Both of them have grown steadily and have long-lasting customer relationships. Each office started out initially with three employees, and since then, staff numbers have quadrupled. This growth also reflects the increased order volume.
Technical Office Jena: ambitiously meeting challenges
After the Berlin Wall went down, Shimadzu made fast inroads into the pharmaceutical industry in the greater Jena area. This key industry has always had a great demand for analytical systems. Through its local presence, Shimadzu could establish long-lasting partnership with its customers. Today, the Technical Office serves all relevant pharmaceutical companies located in the region.
Shimadzu’s solutions are also demanded in the chemical industry, governmental and private laboratories focusing on clinical and environmental issues, or at universities, colleges and public institutions. Dr. Volkmar Schulz, head of the Technical Office Jena, knows why: “Thanks to the excellent teamwork across all our business areas, such as sales, applications and services, we can offer our customers optimal tailor-made solutions. The individual support plays a decisive role.”
Technical Office Berlin: product innovations based on close cooperation
The office’s earliest customer relationships even date back to before the fall of the Berlin Wall. One close relationship in particular led to an innovative product that is known internationally today: TOX.IS, the HPLC system for the determination of poisons and drugs in urine. In the 1990s, a Berlin hospital laboratory needed an automated instrument which could identify toxic compounds in human urine within a short amount of time. In close cooperation with the customer and a research group at Berlin’s Humboldt University, the Shimadzu team developed a prototype that met these demands.
Of course, commercial products cannot result from every single cooperation with clients, but the quality of these relations is exemplary for many of our long-standing customer relationships, explains Dr. Michael Schulze, Head of the Berlin Technical Office. “Customers from the pharmaceutical and chemical industry, academic research, institutes and biotechnology have known and valued our staff for many years – and conversely, our staff knows the circumstances in these companies and institutes. In this way, we can quickly adjust to the current needs of our customers.”
Figure 2a
Figure 2b: 140 years meet 25 years: The teams of the Berlin (figure 2a) and Jena Technical Offices together with a puppet representing company founder Genzo Shimadzu. It will travel around the world in 2015 for a snapshot with Shimadzu’s employees, documenting the company’s 140-year anniversary.
