We do not limit ourselves to one class of materials but combine metals and plastics to create innovative composite products. Our customers come mainly from the automotive industry and from the medical engineering and household technology sectors. Together they have a high demand for efficiency and quality. We also produce components for the locking and building technology. From us you get everything from a single source: the metal inserts are prepared in our own punching workshop and receive a share of plastic during injection moulding. Tools for punching and injection moulding are also manufactured in-house!
The result are metal-plastic hybrid products with a high resilience and an integration of functions that often make further components superfluous.
Product optimisations, cost savings, weight reductions, function integrations and more…
We come across many topics again and again in discussions with customers across all sectors. We can therefore draw on a wealth of experience and, building upon this, work together with you to optimise components. With our high vertical integration, we have a correspondingly large scope for material combinations, automation, tool designs and much more.
Since our company was founded in 1924, we have continuously developed our know-how so that today we are specialists in metal-plastic connections. We do not stand still but seize new opportunities. Therefore, since the end of 2017, we have been part of the OKE Group and using their international orientation within the company network.
With OKE we have been exploiting the group of companies’ many synergies, such as the interaction of technologies, the special-purpose machine engineering and logistical advantages. In addition, central administrative units are based in the holding company.
Metal-plastic hybrids are popular across industries. For example, around 60 per cent of all punched metal parts are now directly or indirectly joined with plastic. And there are good reasons for that! Considering value-adding ideas or following a precise value-added potential analysis, intelligent metal-plastic hybrids are created from which our customers benefit:
The best thing about us is our many great colleagues. We spend a lot of time at the workplace and attach a great deal of importance to good interaction, a motivating working atmosphere and making sure everyone is appreciated. Plus our extra perks for all employees. Schröder forms part of the OKE Group of Companies and is a medium-sized family business. For our employees, this means flat structures and quick decisions, coupled with the opportunities of a globally positioned company.
What about you? Do you get on well with your colleagues? Do you feel appreciated? If you don’t, you should consider joining us!
Whether customer, supplier, employee or manager: we treat each other with respect and fairness.
We make sure that you are well, we keep you informed and are open to your questions and suggestions.
Work is an opportunity to grow, learn something new and achieve common goals.
Our customers are people who entrust us with their orders and pay us. Therefore, we give our best every day for their satisfaction.
We enjoy celebrating joint and personal successes. They motivate us to continue to move forward.
We use good ideas to create perfect solutions. To achieve this, we are prepared to break new ground.
We would rather risk making the wrong decision than nothing happening. Each employee has the opportunity to make decisions autonomously.
Work is a part of our lives that brings us joy, money and success. But we know: there is more than that.
In 2024, we celebrate our 100th anniversary. Strictly speaking, however, there was already a forge before 1924, which was founded by Wilhelm Schröder. Stove and window knobs, bed hooks and all kinds of other everyday items were created under his management. A world war, economic crises, the history of industrialisation and globalisation lie behind us.
An eventful time in which Wilhelm Schröder continued to develop – and often reinvented itself. We carry this idea of development and transformation to our customers and are open to new technologies, processes, markets and challenges!
Gustav Schröder is regarded by us as the founder of the current site. The simple forge becomes a small production company with its first machines, more employees and customers. With automatic bed hook machines, an eccentric press, six machines for the production of tacks (rivets and nails for shoes) and a few small auxiliary machines, the path to industrial production begins.
Bankhaus Otto Geck declares bankruptcy – Gustav Schröder has to prove his entrepreneurial spirit in his very first business year. And he actually succeeds in making a fresh start.
The workforce grows, additional machines are purchased, and production and the product range are expanded.
German troops invade Poland. With the beginning of the war, the production of shoe pins and heel flaps for the soldiers’ boot production is rapidly growing.
Machinery and the entire warehouse are destroyed by shelling, and the buildings are destroyed down to their foundations. Gustav Schröder estimated the damage at around 300,000 marks.
Despite all the depression, reconstruction begins. However, enormous efforts are required before the factory building is back in its shell at the end of 1945.
Production is resumed. However, as the company has already been rebuilt by 1947, there is no entitlement to equalisation payments.
The currency reform puts the brakes on Gustav Schröder once again, as the Deutschmark devalues savings enormously. The conversion of labour wages with rising prices also reduces purchasing power.
The stable new currency and a great deal of entrepreneurial spirit bring an economic upturn. Our bed fittings are exported to Nigeria in their millions, and after the difficult years, we celebrate our 25th anniversary.
The manufacture of shoe fittings is discontinued and the stamping shop is expanded. In addition to production facilities such as automatic punching machines and presses, we also advertise our »well-trained staff«.
Our need for space increases and a two-storey extension is built. Gustav Schröder is nicknamed ›Schoppen (shed) Gustav‹, as from now on he expands shed by shed.
Plastic becomes THE material for industrial mass production. Gustav Schröder once again demonstrates his entrepreneurial spirit and enters the plastics production business in 1955, and the automotive industry places its first orders with us.
The first automatic punching presses are purchased – and the eccentric presses are phased out in the following years. This enables significantly more efficient production.
Generation change: Klaus Wilhelm Schröder joins the company on 1 April and manages the company until March 1999. First together with Manfred Ahlhaus and from 1985 with his nephew Dirk Ahlhaus. Dirk Ahlhaus remains with the company until 2007.
Even after the era of ›Schoppen Gustav‹, construction work continues to accompany us. A hall for the punching shop was opened in 1981, a punching shop and logistics building in 1997, and in 2014 we expanded our production areas by 4,000 square metres.
The development of plastics applications, technologies and interdisciplinary cooperation are important to us. That is why we are a founding member of the Lüdenscheid Plastics Institute, a network with over 400 members today.
Toolmaking is outsourced and the subsidiary schnitt+form is founded. In the same year, we officially fulfil DIN ISO 9001, followed by VDA 6.1 and QS 9000.
We start with the first automated assembly technology. A fully automated rotary table system for mechanical dishwashing components is one of the first applications.
Flooding is a recurring event in our company history. This year, we escaped with a scare. In order to be better prepared for the future, we are participating in the development of a flood protection concept.
In the midst of the global financial and economic crisis, we set up a new plastics production facility with additional injection moulding machines of 200 and 550 tonnes for the partial production of hybrid parts made of metal and plastic.
The shares are transferred from father Klaus Wilhelm to Knut Schröder.
The year is characterised by a major remodelling project: an additional 4,000 square metres and the restructuring of all work areas increase our efficiency. New offices and social areas are also created.
The era of the Schröder family as shareholders comes to an end and the international OKE Group becomes the sole owner of Wilhelm Schröder GmbH.
Health management is introduced. Fitness rooms, prevention and sports programmes are gradually created for all employees.
We are investing extensively in renewable energies with the construction of a large photovoltaic system.
