ZF Friedrichshafen AG is celebrating its centenary in 2015. Over the course of its long history, the company has developed from an aviation specialist with regional roots into an international technology group.
ZF was founded in 1915 as "Zahnradfabrik GmbH" in the city of Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance, which at the time was a technology park for the aviation industry: a conglomerate of partner companies had formed around Luftschiffbau Zeppelin (LZ) GmbH, which was based there and in which LZ was involved - as in the case of "Zahnradfabrik". Between 1916 and 1918, the new company was primarily involved in the development, testing and manufacture of gears for airship construction and aircraft gearboxes.
A process for the manufacture of gearwheels used under exclusive license - it came from the Swiss engineer Max Maag, who was himself involved in the "Zahnradfabrik" - proved to be innovative even beyond the aviation industry. After 1919, it enabled the company to meet the demand for quieter and more user-friendly gearboxes for automobiles.
ZF became a supplier to the automotive industry. Developments and designs by the first managing director and later CEO and company director Alfred Graf von Soden-Fraunhofen proved to be groundbreaking: With the Soden transmission, Aphon transmission and also the standardized transmission, he laid the foundation for the first product successes, with which ZF was also able to leave the capital worries of the founding decade behind and survive the global economic crisis after 1929. A growing portfolio of inventions, for which Soden himself and other ZF designers applied for patents, formed the starting point for more and more new products.
Specialist for technology transfer across industry boundaries
Transferring innovative technology to as many fields of application as possible, even outside the aviation and automotive industries, proved to be a hallmark of ZF in the first decades of its existence. In the 1920s and especially the 1930s, ZF opened up further market segments with products for ships (from 1936) and with the production of agricultural tractor transmissions. ZF also used the acquisition of licenses for this diversification and entry into new market segments - such as the start of the steering business: In 1932, ZF agreed with the US company Ross on the licensed production of passenger car and commercial vehicle steering systems.
When the NSDAP came to power in the German Reich after 1933, which also resulted in massive changes to economic structures, production for the armaments industry began to play an increasingly important role at ZF. Although this still involved transmissions and steering systems, military vehicles, especially tanks, came to the fore as fields of application. This contributed significantly to an expansion of production, so that ZF opened a plant in Schwäbisch Gmünd in 1937 as a further major location in Germany.
With the beginning of the Second World War in 1939, ZF was also integrated into the system for employing forced laborers. By the end of the war, their number had risen continuously to around 2800. At the end of the war, the headquarters in Friedrichshafen in particular had been massively destroyed by Allied bombing. Although ZF was threatened with dismantling and liquidation for years to come, ZF resumed production at the Friedrichshafen site. Tractor engines for agriculture were in particularly high demand. In this context, ZF took over another location in Passau, ZF Waldwerke GmbH, a company established with ZF know-how for the production of transmissions for tracked vehicles and military trucks.
The only car from ZF
The pragmatist Albert Maier also started other activities: He organized the clean-up work at the ZF plant in Friedrichshafen as part of a "work of order", gradually restoring production capability.
He also designed a small vehicle called Champion. Since in the immediate post-war years the automobile and thus the often urgently needed mobility were completely unaffordable for many families, Maier's Champion was deliberately not based on the automotive standard that had already been achieved. His early "downsizing" actually met the needs of the population exactly: the open two-seater was to be able to be dismantled by the customers themselves, the engine block with a 3 hp Triumph engine was removable and could also be used to power machine tools and boats. In view of the high capacity utilization in Friedrichshafen, other companies were to take over the construction of the Champion in 1948; ZF concentrated on the original know-how and awarded the licenses. The vehicle concept was revised several times, but no significant numbers of the Champion were put on the road.
New ownership structure and the economic miracle
It was not until 1950 that the ownership structure of ZF was clarified in the long term: the Zeppelin Foundation, which had been administered by the city of Friedrichshafen since 1947, became the majority shareholder with a stake of 89.8 percent, 6.2 percent of the shares were held by the Brandenstein-Zeppelin family and 4 percent by Maag Zahnräder und Maschinen AG. The foundation model is still in place today. Production at ZF rose sharply, and labor shortages soon became a key problem at the three major German locations. In 1953, ZF initially began producing steering systems under license for the US company Gemmer, and shortly afterwards the company enjoyed increasing success in this market with technically improved in-house developments.
All-claw transmissions for trucks and buses - in addition to tractor transmissions - also proved to be highly sought-after ZF products for several years. ZF later also produced the - from today's perspective - uncomfortable but very robust commercial vehicle transmissions with an increasing number of synchronized gears - which at least saved the driver from having to shift between gears.
At the end of the 1950s, ZF laid the foundation for an expansion program in several directions: Firstly, in 1958, the company set up its first production site outside Europe for an order from Mercedes-Benz - in Sao Caetano do Sul, Brazil. On the other hand, ZF pursued a technological innovation program that focused primarily on hydrodynamic powershift transmissions, which were considered comfortable. The same principle - a torque converter in front of a transmission consisting of planetary gear sets - was used in the hydro-media transmissions for buses and rail vehicles as well as later in passenger cars.
Start with stepped automatic transmissions for cars and buses
In 1963, ZF implemented the principle in the 2 HP 45 hydromedia transmission, which later became the nucleus of the Ecomat transmission for city and intercity buses and whose further development extends to the current successor EcoLife, which now has 6 gears. In 1965 - on the occasion of the company's 50th anniversary - ZF began producing a 3-speed automatic transmission for passenger cars, which laid the foundation for another success story: With the opening of a new location in Saarbrücken in 1970, where this type of transmission has been produced exclusively ever since, ZF established itself as one of the most innovative suppliers of stepped automatic transmissions for passenger cars. With the 8HP eight-speed automatic transmission, this line of tradition also extends to the present day - and also shows how ZF has made this product, which initially focused on driving comfort, more fuel-efficient and more dynamic with each generation.
ZF also took innovation and diversification seriously in order to free itself from cyclical dependence on one industry since the end of the 1960s. ZF responded to the sharp drop in demand for tractor transmissions by also offering pioneering driveline technology for construction machinery. ZF has played a pioneering role in both fields of application, in which engine performance and the demand for driveline functionality and efficiency have increased massively since then, for example with the introduction of continuously variable transmissions and hybrid transmissions, which are currently increasing maneuvering comfort and efficiency in agricultural and construction machinery.
construction machinery, which increase maneuvering comfort and reduce fuel consumption.
ZF was also an early manufacturer of transmissions for marine applications and - in cooperation with Siemens in the 1960s - produced stationary transmissions for mechanical engineering. The aviation industry also moved back into the company's focus - since 1960 with the development of helicopter transmissions.
Since the late 1960s, ZF has driven forward its early internationalization through the continuous development of a service and sales network. ZF managers also laid the foundations for new production locations, for example in Argentina in 1978 and a year later in the USA. The Asia-Pacific region and the market opportunities that presented themselves there were also an early focus for ZF: In 1980, ZF Japan was founded in Tokyo, in China the company entered into its first joint venture for the local production of bus transmissions, in 1984 ZF Steering Gear was founded in Poona, India, and in 1985 ZF began producing steering technology in Malaysia. ZF also began to focus strongly on efficiency at all of its production locations: Innovative manufacturing processes had always been a ZF tradition, rational and later lean production methods now became another.
Fuel efficiency as a trademark
Efficiency with regard to fuel consumption gradually also became a hallmark for ZF products in driveline technology for passenger cars and trucks - and thus extended the product benefits of shifting comfort and safety: Since the oil price shock of the 1970s, the topic of fuel consumption has risen ever higher on the agenda of ZF engineers. In the commercial vehicle industry, falling fuel consumption also had a positive effect on fleet owners' calculations, which increased their willingness to invest in modern, fuel-saving technology.
1980 saw the launch of the Ecosplit, in which a split group doubled the existing number of gears. The higher spread made even more economical operation possible.
ZF took this trend one step further in the mid-1990s with the development of an automatic transmission system for trucks, which was launched on the market under the name AS Tronic and brought ZF considerable commercial success. As this transmission always automatically kept the engine at the most fuel-efficient speed, hardly any manually shifting trucker could keep up with its fuel efficiency. The AS Tronic also reduced the shifting work that was once so laborious in commercial vehicles to a minimum.
In the case of automatic transmissions for passenger cars, the number of gears (and thus the gear spread) also increased in the wake of the 3HP. The transmission type once known for its high fuel consumption proved to be a fuel consumption miracle a few decades later. With the introduction of power steering systems for passenger cars and commercial vehicles, the trend for ZF steering systems initially went in a different direction: significantly more steering comfort, but also higher fuel consumption. ZF soon flipped the switch towards efficiency here too, initially with speed-dependent servo force metering - the Servotronic - and finally with electrification. and finally with the electrification of the steering power assistance according to the "power-on-demand principle" and the introduction of Servolectric electric power steering.
Entrepreneurial expansion
Since 1983, ZF has significantly expanded its product range with major acquisitions - and its position in the ranking of large automotive supplier groups: In 1984, ZF initially acquired 51 percent of the Lemförder Group, including its domestic and foreign subsidiaries. This brought the development and production of chassis components into ZF's area of expertise. In the 1990s, ZF built up development and production expertise for complete axle systems and took this business global for its customers: Today, more than three million axle sets are assembled annually at twelve locations worldwide.
In 2001, ZF took over Mannesmann Sachs AG - the former Fichtel & Sachs AG - and integrated it into the Group structure. At the same time, the components business increased the depth of added value, and the acquisition also meant an intensification of the service and aftermarket business. ZF also took up innovations and traditions that were rooted in Sachs' history. One example is the further development of the "flywheel start module", which was finally mass-produced in 2008 and decisively strengthened the Group's expertise in hybrid drives. ZF's motorsport tradition, which dates back to the 1960s when the company supplied racing transmissions for the Lotus Formula 1 racing team, was also revived following the integration of Sachs. Today, ZF supplies clutches and vibration dampers for the DTM and World Rally Championship racing series.
ZF took an important step towards renewable energies in 2011 with the development of its first transmission for wind turbines. Almost simultaneously, ZF significantly expanded its product range in this market segment through an acquisition and is now one of the most important players in the market with a portfolio of wind power transmissions for almost all power classes.
In September 2014, ZF announced its intention to acquire the US company TRW. In November, a broad majority of TRW shareholders approved the ZF offer. With the completion of the takeover of the listed company TRW under the umbrella of the ZF Group in 2015, the third largest automotive supplier group in the world with a sales volume of over 30 billion euros (more than 40 billion US dollars) and around 138,000 employees will be created in ZF's anniversary year. The ZF Group, complemented by TRW, brings together a comprehensive and complementary product portfolio from the areas of driveline and chassis technology, safety and electronic systems and has a regionally and customer-specifically balanced portfolio in both the volume and premium segments.
ZF is a leading global technology group in driveline and chassis technology as well as active and passive safety technology. The company, which acquired TRW Automotive on May 15, 2015, is now represented at around 230 locations in around 40 countries.
