IPC International Community magazine an association member publication
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IPC COMMUNITY 27 SPRING 2025 "We are a family company and are still family-driven," says Xaver Feiner, vice president of market- ing and sales and, in this case, the company spokesperson, "and that's very important for us from a cul- tural perspective. People are very important to us." This is highly evident in the com- pany's training programs, partic- ularly through its apprenticeships that support young people in the fields of electrical, mechanical, and mechatronics. They support bach- elor's and master's programs and have their own training center. Students of high school and col- lege age attend school two days a week, and train at Zollner for the other days. Or they attend school for two weeks, and then work for three weeks in the training center. "That's the model in Germany," Xaver says. Zollner offers a similar program at its facilities in China. "You have to understand where we are coming from," he says. "Our headquarters are in Zandt, a very small village of about 2,000 people. On our campus, we have about 3,000 people, so we have more employees than people living in the town. But when our founder started the company, we were right at the border of the Iron Curtain." During the 1960s and '70s, that area experienced high unemploy- ment, and Zollner "had no other choice" but to train the local people to build electronics. "No electronics or EMS businesses even existed in our area," Xaver says. "At the time, we were driven by some tourism, and a lot of agriculture. Workers had been moving to Munich, Frank- furt, and Stuttgart to get jobs. Those were the hotspots." Training has remained an essential part of the company. In 2022, Zollner trained its 2,000th apprentice, and every year, it hires between 60 and 100 young people for training. In Germany, a training phase lasts two to three years. "We give everyone the opportu- nity to be taken on," Xaver says. "If they do a good job, they can stay in the company, or they might like to continue their training. If they want to continue their studies, that's okay too." For many years, Zollner has been doing its IPC training in-house, training to Class 2 and 3 in Ger- many, Eastern Europe, and China. "We've really built up this capability for in-house training," he says. At IPC APEX EXPO 2024, Xaver joined the EMS Leadership Summit where he got "an impression of the