CITING the need to assure long-term competitiveness and achieve profitability, Siemens Duewag Schienenfahrzeuge GmbH has announced a restructuring programme that will concentrate all rolling stock production at Uerdingen. Transfer of work from Düsseldorf, which currently produces light rail vehicles, is to be complete by the end of 2001.
SDS has also signalled its intention to farm out some fabrication, and transfer support functions such as stores and plant services to ’an external partner or to a Siemens subsidiary’. The company currently has a permanent staff of 2400, and as part of the restructuring process some 400 jobs will be lost, in addition to the 500 announced last year (RG 6.99 p400). SDS expects that many of the jobs in the latest tranche will be transferred to companies taking on the activities to be spun off.
Herbert Steffen, President of Siemens Transportation Systems, said the SDS ’car building know-how’ was ’strategically important’, and a ’vital component’ of the Siemens portfolio. ’The new structure will not diminish, but strengthen the SDS core business’, he added, stressing that Siemens was keen to secure a long-term future for its Centre of Competence for main line, regional and mass transit rolling stock at Uerdingen.
