My job as managing director is to continue the heritage of the company founder.”
When Franz Doepke came to Norden some 70 years ago to found the company Doepke Schaltgeräte, he could hardly have dreamed that he was laying the foundation for an internationally renowned company.
Today, the legacy of the businessman from North Rhine-Westphalia is in the hands of Andreas Müller – a man with vision, know-how and with the laid-back approach that is so typical in Ostfriesland.
“We make electricity safe. Because our products and the technology behind them ensure that current only flows where it’s supposed to”, says Andreas Müller, putting the concept behind Doepke in a nutshell. It all began in 1956. Company founder Franz Doepke came to Norden with his friend and engineer August-Wilhelm Engels to found a company that would “protect animals and people from dangerous high residual current”. This made them pioneers in the field of residual current protection technology. Das Sortiment des Unternehmens umfasst mehrere tausend Schutzschaltgeräte. Rund 450 Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeiter sind im Stammwerk in Norden und am zweiten Firmenstandort im thüringischen Bickenriede tätig, hinzu kommen Niederlassungen in Großbritannien und den Vereinigten Arabischen Emiraten. Another site is currently under construction in Tangier, Morocco.
Today, Andreas Müller holds the reins as co-owner and managing partner. Born in Aurich, he joined the company’s field sales force in 1994, climbing the career ladder via management positions in sales and marketing. He then became an authorised signatory before finally joining the executive board in 2009. Although the company’s founder has since passed away and there are no descendants working in the firm, Andreas Müller still sees Doepke above all as a family company and wants to make sure it stays like that. “My prime task as managing director is not to reap the biggest possible profit at the end of the year. Instead, first and foremost it’s a case of preserving and continuing the heritage of the company founder.”
Keeping promises
He hadn’t originally planned to settle in his home town. After his apprenticeship, Müller wanted to see the world. But he didn’t stay there for long. “When I lived in Essen, the noise barrier of the A 40 was only four metres away from my window”, he remembers. Reason enough for the man from Moordorf to come home. He appreciates the region and its people. “Here in Ostfriesland, folks can sometimes be a bit stubborn and seem standoffish”, describes Müller “But the promises you make when you look each other in the eyes and shake their hand are the promises you keep. No matter whether you’ve got a written contract or not. We stand by our word”. This was the case back in the 1990s, when a key customer in Great Britain got into financial difficulties. To avoid redundancies, the company in Norden took over the business without further ado. “It ran at a loss to start with”, admits the boss frankly. “It would definitely have been easier to close the site after all. But we’d given them our promise.”
He still sees this as being a typical attribute of people here in Ostfriesland, and one they cultivate in the company too: “Our motto is: anyone can talk. Get it done first, do the talking afterwards.” When everyone was talking about the Corona pandemic and the lockdown, the company not only hired 70 new employees – “The work was there and needed to be done, so why should we introduce short-time working?” – but pushed ahead with digitalising their internal workflows. Digital processes were expanded and put on a professional level so that meetings could be held with business partners around the world. In cooperation with the Emden/ Leer University of Applied Sciences, a studio with seven green screen seats and state-of-the-art video and audio technology was created, which is used for online seminars and expert talks. “It was all put in place swiftly and without any complications. Before long, we’d become a role model for the industry”, reports Müller with pride. “Today, our online conferences with people from all over the world make you think that everyone’s in the same room.”
Being transparent
According to Andreas Müller, his motivated team is one of the main reasons why they went digital so quickly. The most important thing for him is never to lose contact with the grassroots in all his management tasks, because all employees should know the boss personally. After all, the boss should know all his employees personally. It is therefore no great surprise to find him on the factory floor, even if he’s only just got back from a business trip to Dubai. “We don’t have a Senior Vice President sitting in a posh office abroad somewhere, but a boss directly on the spot. I want my team to be able to see me and talk to me at any time.”
Andreas Müller was in his mid-thirties when he enrolled at the University of Oldenburg to study business administration for the SME sector. Looking back, that was exactly the right thing to do, he says today. Those years shaped many aspects of his management style. For example, his focus on transparency. Fairly obvious, actually, with Müller being a man who doesn’t mince his words. He has no qualms about discussing the annual turnover with all department heads – after all, “why make it a secret? It concerns us all.”
For the future, above all he would like to see young people recognise the potential offered by the SME firm around the corner. You don’t always have to get your training away from Ostfriesland in order to see the world later on, he thinks. There can also be super career opportunities right next door in internationally networked companies. It is obvious that Doepke is a great career choice. The meaningfulness of one’s own actions is always the focus: “No matter where we deliver our products or for what purpose, every person in the world is worth protecting. What we do makes a contribution to this every single day.”
Thinking a step ahead
Always thinking ahead in Doepke’s area of expertise – an exciting challenge for Müller. Research and development are firmly anchored in the company’s philosophy. At Germany’s leading trade-fair Light + Building, the company received the Design Plus Award for an AI- supported current monitoring device. “Doepke e.Guard converts measured values into cloud-capable signals, making it ideal for large production facilities”, explains the company boss. Instead of troubleshooting, which often took several hours and forced production to come to a standstill, Doepke e.Guard can provide a remedy through permanent monitoring. The device is a clever invention that has once again put the internationally renowned company from Norden on the radar of the trade press and competitors in the industry. “That’s our speciality”, Müller says simply. “If we don’t do research and development, who will?”
Doepke offers the world’s largest range of protective switchgear, with several thousand variants of protective switches and devices. With the Doepke Academy, the company trains its customers all across Europe. There’s probably never an end in sight when it comes to training and product development, says the expert, who sees that there’s still a long way to go in the energy transition. “When we start talking about upgrading photovoltaic arrays and heat pumps, we mustn’t forget adequate fuse protection for the for the corresponding house connections and supply lines. In every single tiny residential street in the state.“ It’s challenges like this that make everyday work so fascinating for Andreas Müller.
Striking a balance
Despite all the responsibility he bears for his company and his staff, Andreas Müller is at peace with himself and the world. Not least because he strikes a balance with his free time, when he can be found above all walking and cycling out-of-doors, or the workshop he has set up for himself at home. “Chopping wood for the fire, doing minor household repairs or working in the garden, simply doing things with my hands. I need this as a balance to my job, that often takes me all over the world”, he says. Not surprisingly, Müller does not choose a four-star hotel in exotic countries for his holidays, but prefers the campsite around the corner. “To sit outside my mobile home enjoying the sun and getting to know people I’d never have met otherwise – for me that’s the best way to relax.”
He’s already travelled through Southern Europe in this way, as well as coming to appreciate camping sites in the Netherlands, on the coast of Ostfriesland or Schleswig-Holstein and also in the Harz mountains. “Have you ever been to “Holstein Switzerland? It’s beautiful there!”, he enthuses. He certainly thinks people should travel more in their own country. He never really appreciated it as a young adult. “But then I went to Nordeney for work and suddenly understood why so many people come here on holiday.” Since then, one of his favourite ways to take a time-out from every day routines is to jump on the ferry in nearby Norddeich and pop over to the island for a day. And when the “Frisia” ferry docks back on the mainland in the evening, Andreas Müller’s batteries are recharged. Ready for the next day to give his all for the company that has become his family.
Doepke Schaltgeräte GmbH
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