More hours are not productivity

In early July, thousands of Mercedes employees stood in front of the factory gate in Sindelfingen. Some shouted “Ola out”. According to the union, around 20,000 employees joined the protest in Sindelfingen; Mercedes spoke of 10,000 participants. The trigger was the board’s announced “productivity offensive for Germany” and the debate about longer working hours without wage compensation (tagesschau/SWR).

At the centre is a sentence that brought people onto the streets: work more for the same pay. In many areas, that means moving from 35 to 40 hours. Reuters also reported on nationwide IG Metall protests against plans to extend working time and postpone a special payment (Reuters).

Automotive commentator Philipp Raasch, known as Autopreneur and himself almost ten years at Mercedes, put it bluntly: this is not a productivity offensive. It is a working-time offensive.

With several PRODVIS customers from the MedTech mid-market, I therefore asked a different question: what can a heavily regulated industry learn from this case? If anything.

Mercedes has a demand problem

Mercedes is not facing a simple cost problem. The group is facing a market problem. Combustion-engine customers are hesitating. Electric vehicles are selling less strongly than planned. Chinese manufacturers are building faster, cheaper and often closer to new customer expectations.

The board’s answer is: more hours, lower labour cost per hour, more presence. But more hours do not solve a demand problem. They only stretch an old model for longer.

That is the first lesson for mid-market companies: productivity does not begin with the clock. It begins with the question whether the company is working on the right problem.

MedTech starts from a different base

MedTech mid-market companies have a quiet advantage. People are getting older. They need diagnostics, implants, surgical instruments, specialist consumables and reliable supply. This demand does not disappear when the economy weakens.

Germany is Europe’s largest healthcare market. Germany Trade & Invest points to demographic change as a central driver: by 2035, more than a quarter of the German population will be 65 or older (GTAI).

That is not the entrepreneur’s achievement. It is demography. But demography creates a window of time.

Regulation is a burden. And a protective wall.

Many MedTech companies first experience regulation as a brake. Technical documentation, evidence, audits, traceability, quality management. Everything takes time. Everything costs money.

At the same time, this regulation is a protective wall. Medical devices cannot simply be placed on the EU market. The European framework for medical devices and in-vitro diagnostics requires, among other things, conformity assessment, CE marking, market surveillance and responsibilities along the supply chain (European Commission).

No approval, no sale. That keeps out cheap competition that is already putting pressure on prices in the automotive industry. There is an electric car from China. There is no implant from a copy-paste factory.

The mid-market has shorter paths

The second difference is not in the market. It is in the decision distance.

In a large corporation, the board, supervisory board, works council, major shareholders, analysts and capital-market logic all have a say. A course correction takes months. Sometimes years.

In a family business, the decision-maker is often in the next room. He or she can stop a project in one meeting. A process can be changed before it becomes a programme. No quarterly story has to be polished for analysts.

But this advantage only counts if it is used. Short paths without decisions are not an advantage. They are an unused right.

Liability changes leadership

The Mercedes board is accountable to the capital market. The managing director of a MedTech mid-market company is often accountable with his or her own name, own signature and sometimes own assets.

That changes behaviour. Those who are personally liable think less in quarters. They think in generations. Or at least they should.

No company is safe because of that. MedTech businesses also fail: because of succession, financing, slow regulation, poor data, wrong systems or themselves. The advantage is not a free pass. It is a window of time.

What needs to happen now

The lesson from Sindelfingen is not: everyone in the MedTech mid-market now has to work longer. The lesson is: do not wait until the market forces you.

Look at the real productivity levers: throughput times, master data, ERP processes, interfaces, quality documentation, approvals, stock movements, traceability and complaints. That is where productivity sits. Not in the fifth additional hour of the working week.

A company does not become more productive because people stay longer. It becomes more productive when friction disappears.

PRODVIS practice note

If you want to improve productivity, do not start with working time. Start with one process that is too slow, too manual or too error-prone today. Then measure how many queries, rework loops and waiting times disappear.