Sound and Smoke Are No Problem

3105/2011

Product Development. A well-known manufacturer of high-quality electroacoustic equipment uses 3-D CAD and digital product data management in product development. The use of software allows a wide range of different models to be developed and produced in small series. The equipment pays off particularly under difficult conditions.

Please fasten your seatbelts. When you hear this announcement in an Airbus, the air stewardess is likely to be speaking into a handset from Holmco. This is the tradename used for the professional electroacoustic equipment for voice transmission in loud and harsh conditions from Holmberg GmbH & Co.KG. In a historic brick building in the center of Berlin-Kreuzberg, Germany, where sonorous Bechstein grand pianos used to be built, the company, founded in 1919, now builds microphones, headphones, headsets, handsets and accessories for use in aircraft and rail vehicles, by the police and fire department. Holmberg is thus the only supplier of handsets, equipping all the trains of the German national railway.

At the heart of these microphones are efficient acoustic transducers, which Holmberg produces itself and also supplies as components to the communication industry and other sectors. “With our products, it is not a matter of a beautiful tone”, says CEO Eberhardt Wolfram,“but reliable voice transmission under difficult conditions, for example where there is a lot of noise, in wind and weather, wet, heat or extreme cold.”

While electroacoustic equipment for the aero industry is more highly standardized due to official approval regulations and cannot be arbitrarily modified, Holmberg develops individual solutions for other industries and customers. The product range is correspondingly large. Microphones, headphones and handsets are available in 3,000 different models, with very long lifecycles in many cases, and it is necessary to stock spare parts for these for long periods. In addition, there are 500 different types of acoustic transducer, which are produced in a total of 200,000 units per year. “We are a giant in models and a dwarf in quantities”, says Wolfram. “The special characteristics of our products distinguish them from commodity goods from the Far East, which justifies their high price and allows us to succeed on the market as a niche supplier with small or medium-sized series.”