Hungarian automotive industry: week 49 2018 edition
Wage talks end with agreement at Mercedes. Let’s take a few minutes to recap what last week brought in Hungary’s automotive sector.
Kecskemét-based Mercedes has concluded its wage talks with the plant union. The base wage of Mercedes employees is set to increase by as much as 35% percent.
Audi has started the pre-sale of the anniversary-edition TT.
Lear Corporation Hungary Kft. will shut down its Gyöngyös location, laying off 500 people as a result. The company will relocate its activities to Ukraine, Serbia and Romania due to high labour costs.
Bosch is not expecting any growth in the vehicle manufacturing sector next year. They say the stagnation is due to the effects of the diesel-crisis and shrinking demand on the Chinese market.
Szombathely-based TDK wins tender to develop aluminium electrolyte capacitors.
No agreement has been made on the minimum wage and guaranteed minimum pay taking effect on 1st January 2019.
Skilled workers and manual workers can expect a 6.8 percent increase, while staffers and those holding specialist qualification can expect a 6.1 percent wage increase. The average wage hike is planned at 5.7 percent in managerial positions and 5.3 for executives, according to the companies asked.
Debrecen is already preparing for the arrival of BMW with a HUF 130 million investment in the region’s railway network and public utilities infrastructure.
The net sales revenue of companies registered in Bács-Kiskun County increased by 7.3 percent in 2017 from the previous year. Mercedes, the largest employer of the county, posted a revenue growth of HUF 44 billion.
Péter Bóna has been chosen to lead the IoT workgroup of ICT Hungary, while Szabolcs Erki has been named as his deputy.
Competitiveness depends on a number of factors. One of its keys is to allow company executives to be familiar with corporate processes in an accurate, authentic and numeric fashion. Although the importance of this might seem natural, production tracking systems developer Digitop Kft. sees a lot of counterexamples in the industry.
“If an automotive manufacturer opts for digitalisation, suppliers will sooner or later need to conform to that. Although we are currently experiencing this transformation period, it is not in the favour of competitiveness if this process is prolonged significantly,” Dávid Giber, SAP Hungary Kft.’s division head, told us.
A good auditor must be familiar with numerous aspects, criteria and characteristics, while an exceptional one must know even more. In addition, interpersonal skills, familiarity with company-specific tools and techniques, internal inspection standards and various methodologies to determining theoretical and practical compliance are also crucial.
“Up until now, companies have been used to not having to put much effort into keeping their existing labour force. The generation who founded their businesses after the change of regime grew accustomed to having a functioning business even with moderate attention to employees.
"However, the current climate on the labour market has started to push them in a direction to focus on keeping employees and avoid arriving at a point where they have to look for new ones,” HR specialist Veronika Ale told us.
EuroSkills, the European competition of professions, was held in late-September in Budapest. The best finishers were invited for a visit at the Parliament.
“Our first car was designed by three students and built by six in the duration of two years. The vast majority of parts were made in-house, as back then we didn’t have any sponsors,” Ruiu Cristian, team captain if the student team from Politehnica University of Timișoara, told us in an interview.
The MaxWhere 3D platform, a joint effort by Győr-based Maxhwere and IoT platform developer REACH Solutions, has won in an international competition.
