“Let’s talk right here, if you don’t mind,” he suggests without looking up. We want to know what his work consists of and what’s essential for being the production manager. “Well…assembling bicycles properly.” The right corner of his mouth is twitching but his gaze remains firmly on the drive unit. He is shifting his stance. “Craftsmanship is definitely important, and a good organizational disposition.”

The master bike mechanic carefully moves the drive unit from right to left, out of the opening, back in, it’s not in perfect position yet.

“I haven’t been doing anything other than bike-stuff since I was 15” he tells us quite dryly. And then he himself starts laughing about his statement. “Well, this process of assembling something from many individual parts that will work, roll, ride, that’s quite satisfying. I still enjoy that.”

By now, assembling is rarely part of Jan’s job, at least when it comes to serial assembly. Today, he mainly coordinates his team’s work at the individual workstations of the assembly line, ensuring that productivity and quality remain at GBN level height. “Our goal: properly assembled, properly packaged, and in a reasonable amount of time.”

As with a bicycle itself, the daily coordination involves many small individual parts: creating and comparing parts lists, writing assembly instructions, building samples, supervising pilot series, working out how the bicycle is to be assembled in the first place, and finally the documentation and providing all the information to the team.

Jan circles the frame to its other side without letting go of the drive unit. He nudges it again from the different angle and it slides to its designated position without a hint of resistance. Now, he does take his eyes off the frame, looks at us, and smiles contentedly.

“We do a lot of manual work, the parts are all high-end, our work is at that same level and the results stand for it.”

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