Ensuring Future Success. But How?

But what exactly does this mean in practice? Resilience is primarily a question of boosting productivity at ZEISS and making our investments in research and development, infrastructure, IT, etc. more successful. What doesn't qualify as strengthening resilience? Just cutting costs or even stopping investments. Every single one of us can do their part to make ZEISS more resilient. Take our colleagues in Guangzhou, for example. At the on-site Green, Safe & Responsible Experience Center, each employee can learn about initiatives designed to ensure environmentally friendly production which, ultimately, reduce costs. Local staff can even suggest their own ideas.

This concept conserves natural resources and promotes cost awareness on the ZEISS team. Or we might look to a different example, CurioZ, the online marketplace for educational content at ZEISS. The new platform will enable each employee to further their professional education on an ongoing basis – to better keep pace as their job continues to evolve. This way, each employee will be more resilient when confronted with changes while also generating added value for the entire company. You'll find more examples like these on the following pages – and we need more of them. You'll see that these success stories always involve a new approach to teamwork and taking responsibility for productivity and efficiency. I'd now like to address these two points in greater detail.

At first, it seems to hardly warrant mention: teamwork that spans every conceivable organizational boundary strengthens companies. If we want to make our company resilient and ensure it enjoys a robust position so that sudden changes in important markets and technological disruptions don't destabilize our company, we have to work together even more effectively as a truly networked company. This is where increasing digitalization can bolster teamwork, e.g. with Office 365 and the new TEAM ZEISS Employee Portal, which we're rolling out gradually over the course of the year.

Culturally, there are a few areas where we aren't quite where we want to be: we need to focus more sharply on organizational and individual responsibility for costs and productivity. And by that, I don't mean just cutting costs and saving money, but thinking long and hard about expenditures and investments and really getting the most out of the latter. Our building plans in Dublin, Jena and Guangzhou along with our acquisitions – most recently GOM – are very much investments made with ZEISS' future in mind.

We've started a Group-wide project and are currently working hard on developing initiatives for improving resilience at ZEISS – from boosting efficiency in the sales and service units to optimizing our procurement processes. The Resilience project is presented in detail on the following pages – we are certain that it is the right approach and important for ZEISS. After all, it ultimately comes down to how each and every one of us acts. We must: Be cost conscious and use our resources responsibly. Network as much as possible so that you and your colleagues can develop ideas together. This is the only way ZEISS can continue to be as successful as it is today in such a rapidly changing world.