Market Position

VOLK is one of the leading European manufacturers of transport vehicles designed for use in the industrial sector, on airports, and in municipal applications. At the same time, VOLK has the most extensive range of tow tractors and fixed-platform trucks in all of Europe.

VOLK is the only European manufacturer that offers not only a complete range of possible drive options for these products – from electric, to diesel and hybrid to LPG drives – but covers also the entire performance range from 1 to 150 tons towed load and from 0.3 to 5 tons bearing load with series-production vehicles.

The unique breadth and depth of our product range enable us to offer our customers a tailor-made solution for all horizontal transport tasks. Based on our long experience and our extensive array of products, we advise our customers in a neutral and objective manner to find the optimum transport solution for the respective application together.

Philosophy

We endeavor to support our customers with innovative, functional and high quality products for the smooth and cost-efficient management of their transport tasks.

We condensed this philosophy in the maxim innovation@work, which represents our mission statement. It motivates our employees every day anew to apply all their creativity and their knowledge to the continuous development and improvement of our products.

As a user you profit from this substantially. Because with our innovative concepts and practical detail solutions, we contribute significantly to the reduction of your logistics costs. The numerous innovation awards conferred on our company within the last few years prove that these claims are not just empty promises. However we attach much greater importance to the high regard that customers have for our products and that is reflected in longstanding collaboration with our customers as partners.

Although the technological lead of our products is not always obvious at first glance due to their functional design, this is not a contradiction but rather a conscious and consistent implementation of the claim associated with the maxim innovation@work: for experience bears us out time and again that even though a product may appear elegant and modern, it does not always necessarily stand the test in daily use.

Objectives

To be able to assist our customers optimally with the smooth and cost-efficient management of their transport tasks, we conduct continual and intensive analyses of their requirements and needs. Three central requirements are clearly revealed by these analyses. As primary development objectives, these requirements are the standard by which we continually measure every single product detail in order to find an optimum solution.

1.High utilization

The be-all and end-all of industrial trucks – as of all investment goods – is high usability. This follows from preferably short vehicle downtimes, optimum suitability for the respective purpose and from the possibility to use the vehicle flexibly as requirements and conditions change.

2.Low life cycle costs

The acquisition costs of investment goods typically make out only a fraction of the total life cycle costs. For this reason we focus primarily on those factors that form the central influential lever for consistent minimization of life cycle costs. These are in particular low operating costs and a long service life.

3.Optimum working conditions through ergonomic design

Ergonomic findings prove that optimum working conditions promote employee productivity, stamina and satisfaction, thus leading to a gain in efficiency. Therefore designing our products as ergonomically as possible is also one of our central objectives.Partnerships

At VOLK cooperation relations are deliberately cultivated to ensure continuous further development of products and acceleration of innovations. Customers and suppliers are systematically involved in the development of new pro-ducts in order to utilize their know-how optimally. This enables us to identify innovation opportunities at an early stage and cultivate the permanent exchange of ideas about innovation concepts and projects. In this manner we do not have just “strokes of luck“ once in a while, but grow continuously with innovative products.

VOLK is also excellently positioned in service and sales through partnerships. For instance, our longstanding part-nerships with some of the leading forklift-truck manufacturers enable us to provide maintenance, repair and overall services competently and with minimum reaction time all over Europe. This important factor also helps to guarantee the availability of our products.

Structures

Like most medium-sized companies, VOLK has extremely flat hierarchies. Naturally we are aware that flat hierar-

chies alone are not an advantage, but only lead to increased flexibility and efficiency when they are associated with consistent delegation of decision-making authority to the individual employees at the same time.

To guarantee this and to ensure maximum customer orientation at the same time, we try to organize the provision

of our goods and services according to continuous business processes as far as possible. This leads to a reduc-tion of interfaces and thus to improved coordination of individual contributions. We also attach great importance to increasing employee satisfaction and motivation. This is achieved by the clear relation of all activities to the cus-

tomer.

Our degree of vertical integration has been continuously reduced within the last few years. In addition to helping us to ensure short delivery times even for bulk orders, this allows for a focus on core competences throughout the en-tire value chain at the same time.

Perspectives

Based on our outstanding position in the market, we are convinced that we will be able to participate in the dynamic growth of the industrial truck and logistics industry to a superlative degree in the future as well. Our satisfied cus-

tomers, the well above-average proportion of innovative products in the overall turnover and our highly qualified and motivated employees are valuable assets that help us to strengthen our market position lastingly.

We also tackled the issue of company succession – traditionally a rather sensitive problem area in medium-sized companies which is therefore often avoided – at an early stage. We set the course for a smooth transition to the“next generation“ when Dr. Matthias Baur joined the company. Before switching to VOLK, Dr. Baur worked as a management consultant for the American strategy and technology consulting firm BOOZ, ALLEN & HAMILTON.