30 years of building contacts

Visiting German companies and institutions has been a regular part of DMAN's seminar and training programmes ever since the academy was founded in 1989. Over time, however, the number of visits per seminar and the ratio of seminar days vs. days of visits have changed significantly.

In the first few years, the focus used to be on the seminar work. Usually, only one day per week was reserved for company visits. But from the very beginning, the thematic focus of these visits and the host companies were carefully selected on the basis of the industries and interests of our participants. Often they visited manufacturing companies (mechanical engineering, oil supply industry, automobile construction), but the building industry (housing and road construction) and energy suppliers were also in demand frequently.

Today, a one-week seminar usually includes two to three days of visits. The participants get to know corporate best practices on site. Managers and employees of the visited companies share their experiences, provide insights into their production environment and discuss the seminar topics with their guests.

But it is not only the practical experience of management topics that is in the foreground during the company visits, but also the direct exchange of experience. Even in the age of e-learning, webinars, Internet tutorials etc., there is no substitute for face-to-face meetings with German counterparts, personal discussions and on-site visits.

In order to offer this opportunity to our customers and seminar participants, we organise up to 300 company visits per year.

However, contacts to companies in Lower Saxony, and to German companies in general, are not only initiated during company visits. Individual contacts between programme participants and companies are also established as part of the manager training programme of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). In numerous cases, these encounters lead to long-term business relationships generating success for both sides.

On average, we arrange contacts to 80 German companies, predominantly to medium-sized enterprises, for each of these groups.