 |
Dec. 13, 2004 – Throughout much of the 20th century, Dortmund was Germany’s steel city. In its heyday, the major steelmaker ThyssenKrupp employed more than 40,000 locally, and its factories dotted the landscape. The other leading industries, coal and beer, employed another 40,000 combined.
Today, ThyssenKrupp employs fewer than 1,000 in the area, and most foundries sit vacant or have been demolished. The other industries have waned as well. But rising on the site of one former blast furnace is a decidedly different kind of factory: one that hopes to produce microsystems companies and the jobs that come with it.
 |
MST.factory Dortmund, expected to open in spring 2005, will be a 21,000-square-foot center serving as an incubator for startups, joint ventures, and research and development groups. Services will include prototyping and development work, as well as consulting and training. The center also will rent space for offices, laboratories and clean rooms.
MST.factory hasn’t waited for a permanent home to set up shop. A temporary facility operates nearby in the Dortmund Technology Park, and has signed up a half-dozen companies. The new center is part of a larger effort by 2010 to create 70,000 jobs in the area, a quarter of which city and regional officials envision coming in the microsystems sector. More than 135 acres of brownfield land have been set aside for settling MEMS-related companies.
It might seem like a lofty goal for the west German town steeped in mature industries, but the area has been working to redevelop itself since the late 1980s and early ’90s.
Among the early arrivals on the micro side was STEAG microParts, which was formed in 1990. With more than 300 employees, it now is one of the largest companies in Dortmund. The former STEAG AG subsidiary was acquired Oct. 1 by German pharmaceutical firm Boehringer Ingelheim, which helped to develop and sell Respimat, microParts’ metered-dose inhaler. It plans to keep its staff and facility in Dortmund.
Other independent efforts that helped to form a microsystems foundation included research at both the Dortmund Technology Center and University of Dortmund. Work at the university led to the 1988 launch of HL Planartechnik, which makes MEMS-based sensors for automotive, medical, consumer and industrial applications.
“The steel industry knew conditions wouldn’t last forever,” said Hans-Rudolf Folle, MST.factory’s chief executive and a former ThyssenKrupp official in Dortmund.
“Steel companies started to diversify, and I had the opportunity to do that. I was asked to create companies in telecom and mobile communications. I wrote papers for getting the MEMS industry to Dortmund.
“We said, ‘We switched off the lights of the steel business in Dortmund. We want to create other jobs.'”
Efforts by Folle and others lured about a dozen small- to medium-size microsystems firms, but the campaign intensified in 1999, when ThyssenKrupp and the city hired global business consultants McKinsey & Co. to conduct a survey.
The resulting document identified three sectors worth further development: microsystems, information technology and logistics. To keep the momentum going, government and industry leaders created the Dortmund Project, whose goals include supporting the startups and attracting investors from inside and outside Germany.
Dortmund now has 26 microsystems firms, and, just as importantly, a cooperative spirit among many of its players, according to Christine Neuy, chief executive of the Dortmund-based trade group IVAM Microtechnology Network.
Several of the companies located in Dortmund’s tech center, for instance, work together and even exchange employees. She said companies in Dortmund’s microsystems cluster typically come in two flavors: old-line firms that have diversified into small tech, and startups. Marketing and distribution is not a problem for the former category, but they often need help learning about new applications.
For the latter group, it’s reversed. IVAM itself reflects the city’s effort to link both locally and globally. While the publicly and privately funded association was created by seven Dortmund companies as a meeting point and business development platform, it has included foreign firms from the start. It now has more than 130 members from 11 nations.
“The federal state said we can’t stop at the borderlines,” Neuy said. “We can have a more neutral position being international. It’s useful for the federal state we have this global mission.” Neuy and Folle were part of a German contingent that visited Pittsburgh in September to attend METRIC, a two-day annual meeting of the MEMS Industry Group.
Folle said he frequently takes such trips to recruit academic and industrial collaborators. While he said efforts to rebuild Dortmund have been successful so far, he knows that hurdles remain. He has met with German tax consultants to find ways to ease what he considers a regulatory burden on startups.
He also tries to entice Germany’s individual and institutional investors who are traditionally reluctant to invest in early-stage firms. “We need to create a VC-business angel culture,” said Folle, whose has worked for academia, industry and government. “That’s another part of my job.”