Blogs

This week it was officially announced that VanMoof is bankrupt. The well known Amsterdam ‘cool’ E-bike manufacturer with customers from Tokyo to New York. Customers had to pay € 3,500 to be able to ride such a bike.

Unfortunately and really sad, because it is / was a great Dutch company to be proud of. According to Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, "it is a disappointment for the Dutch manufacturing industry. Especially because the Helmond solar car manufacturer Lightyear, also a public favorite for a long time, also ran into problems six months ago. Both new manufacturing companies had sky-high ambitions with consumer products: Lightyear wanted to turn the car industry upside down like a new Tesla, just as VanMoof wanted to become the Apple of bicycle builders."  

In the southern and eastern regions of the Netherlands there are a lot of high tech companies. What is happening here in the Netherlands is viewed with admiration elsewhere in the world. At the Precision Fair this week in Den Bosch, The Netherlands you could see this with your own eyes: great innovative companies that present their high tech achievements. The ASML momentum is of course one of the main driving forces behind this. But ASML would not be able to deliver their unbeatable EUV lithography systems without the highly innovative suppliers they have committed to themselves.

However, there is also a phrase going around in the industry: high tech products, but low tech processes. What is produced is unprecedented and world-class, but various people in high tech say that the production and delivery processes in the supply chain can and should become much more efficient. We think there are 3 reasons for this.