Doing an apprenticeship after primary school is a matter of course for her. So it was all the better that the MAPAL production manager in 1951 gave the 13-year-old Frieder Häberle an apprenticeship after just a cursory glance on him through the window. However, the same production manager, together with the commercial manager and a number of employees, changes 1954 to a new competitor in Lauchheim which was being set up by a large manufacturer of precision tools.
After his apprenticeship, Frieder Häberle also moves to the competitor. There, he completes a technician training programme and numerous further training courses alongside his work and was promoted to technical operations manager in a short space of time. However, this does not prevent him from teaching Dieter Kress how to play tennis shortly afterwards, which leads to a close friendship. His tennis pupil repeatedly urges him to return to MAPAL. Frieder Häberle finally agrees after a merry carnival party. This was in 1972, when Dr Dieter Kress already is Managing Director of MAPAL. Despite this, the two remain close friends until Dr Dieter Kress's death in 2023.
INVENTOR WITH THE BEST CONTACTS TO THE EXECUTIVE FLOOR
Frieder Häberle's re-employment soon proves to be the right decision. As head of the newly established testing and development shop, he succeeds in patenting the first innovations in 1975. Over the course of his career, more than a hundred more would follow. Häberle's speed of development was aided by his technical skills, but also by his good relationship with his boss, which is characterised by unsparing openness. “We were already very closely connected on must admit,” recalls Frieder Häberle, who continues to come to the company every Friday until 2024, even as a very old pensioner.
As a man of action, Frieder Häberle is not only significantly involved in the continuous improvement of MAPAL fine machining tools, he also supports Dr Dieter Kress and his son Dr Jochen Kress in practical test series for their dissertations. And he witnesses how the number of employees in the precision tools division rise from 25 to around 5,000 today and MAPAL develops into the world market leader in precision machining. He sees the recipe for success in the first-class quality of the tools. Also in the courage to go out to customers all over the world and offer them solutions. “By doing so we have also changed the world,” he is certain.
