Podcast „Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“
Episode #44 | Viktoria Schütz: "We are like a startup, but with baggage"
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Podcast Episode 44
Viktoria Schütz: "We are like a startup, but with baggage"
Viktoria Schütz, Managing Director of DEGUMA-SCHÜTZ
Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
EPISODE DESCRIPTION
Shortly after German reunification, the entrepreneurial couple Winfried and Barbara Schütz bought an old lemonade factory in Röhn, Hesse, with the aim of repairing used machines, refurbishing them with new components and then selling them all over the world for rubber production. Today, DEGUMA-SCHÜTZ, based in Geisa, Thuringia, employs around 50 people, generates sales in the single-digit million range and now also manufactures its own rolling mills, for example for the automotive industry. Daughter Viktoria Schütz has been running the company together with another managing director since 2019. "For most of my life, I didn't want to do it, and then everything turned out differently," says Viktoria Schütz in the interview about taking over the family business.
In the traditionally male-dominated mechanical engineering sector, the female dual leadership is an exception. The share of women in the company's workforce is also unusually high at 40 percent. "Intelligence is equally distributed, we need women just as much as men in business," says Viktoria Schütz. This is why the two Managing Directors at Deguma are taking innovative approaches: they have transformed the entire company, introduced the 4-day week and rely on flexible part-time models. "Without alternative working time models, we lose potential". Viktoria Schütz talks about New Work in mechanical engineering, the initially difficult collaboration with her father and life between the German capital and the provinces - in the podcast "Alles Neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum" with Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum, and Capital editor Katja Michel.
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Viktoria Schütz
Before joining the family business, Viktoria Schütz studied Global Management and Marketing Management in Bremen, Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Eberswalde. Since 2019, she has been managing the business at DEGUMA in a dual leadership role with a managing director from outside the family. She has also been involved in various associations on a voluntary basis for many years.
About the Podcast
How can the origin and future of Mittelstand companies be courageously united? What are the challenges facing family businesses and what experiences do they gather in digital transformation? These questions are answered by “Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“, the interview podcast for German Mittelstand*. Once a month, Tobias Rappers, Managing Director of Maschinenraum, and Nils Kreimeier, Senior Editor of the business magazine Capital, talk to thought leaders and makers from the heart of the German economy and focus on the personalities and their motivation. *The podcast is in German.
For more episodes of “Alles neu...? Aus dem Maschinenraum“ please click here!
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