Reichle & De-Massari
 | |
| Public Company | |
| Industry | Information and communications technology |
| Founded | 1964 |
| Founder | Hans Reichle, Renato De-Massari |
| Headquarters | Wetzikon, Switzerland |
Key people |
Michel Riva (CEO) Johannes (Hans) Hess (Chairman of the Supervisory Board |
| Revenue | 197.3 CHF (2013) |
Number of employees | over 800 |
| Website | www.rdm.com |
Reichle & De-Massari AG (R&M), based in Wetzikon, is an independent Swiss family business specializing in information and communications technology. The company concentrates on the development and manufacturing of cabling technology for communications networks. The company is fully owned by the Reichle family and has more than 800 employees. The company’s annual sales in 2013 amounted to CHF 197.3 million (around €164 million).
History
R&M was founded by Hans Reichle and Renato De-Massari in 1965 as a two-man business. The two employees of Switzerland’s telecommunications company came up with the idea of a new, easier-to-install telephone outlet, which to this day is known as Reichle-Connector in Switzerland. Originally R&M was set up to develop this product and market it throughout Switzerland. The company then broadened its range of products and services to cabling technology for data and voice networks as a whole, based on copper and optical fiber cabling (glass and polymer fibers). One of the firm’s core products is its Cat. 6 module for Ethernet networks, which is widely used in networks all over the world. The product’s success was founded on, among other things, its sales partnership with IBM, which lasted many years (1993–1999). Following the death of Renato De-Massari, his business partner Hans Reichle took overall charge of the company. On the company’s 40th anniversary in 2005 Hans Reichle retired to the Board of Directors and handed over operational responsibilities to his two sons Martin and Peter, who ran the company in their respective positions as CEO and COO until August 2012. Michel Riva became the company’s first ever externally appointed CEO on 1 September 2012. Supervisory board members Martin and Peter Reichle continue to represent the interests of the family owners. Although R&M is a joint-stock company, it is not quoted on the Stock Exchange. This independence allows R&M to channel more of its energies into research and development, freeing the company from the short-term demands of the financial markets.
Products
R&M designs solutions for private networks, data centers and public network carriers. Private networks are used by companies of all sizes and include everything from office cabling to industrial networks. Due to the difficult conditions in which industrial cabling often operates, the components employed need to meet the highest standards of reliability and stability. All R&M products are limited to network cabling technology. Yet the company nonetheless offers its customers the installation of complete solutions through certified partners. With this in mind, R&M has set up a large-scale qualified partner programme with a view to creating an extensive network of certified partners in the installation sector.
R&M's portfolio for public network carriers includes FTTx solutions for central office, outside plant and on-site applications. R&M also offers fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) solutions. R&M is a gold sponsor of the Fiber-to-the-Home-Council Europe, an organisation dedicated to promoting the installation of ultra-fast fiber-optic networks linking companies and private households.
10 Gbit/s over 100 m copper lines
R&M is one of the companies who offer 10Gbit Ethernet via copper cables. R&M is a defender of the shielded cabling technology, but in order to meet market requirements they developed a new way to combine the advantages of shielded and unshielded cabling. With this new WARP technology (short for Wave Reduction Patterns), the cables and modules are shielded over their entire length with about 1.6 cm foil segments and metallic plates which are not connected to one another and are isolated by small gaps. One particular feature of this “floating” shielding is that it does not need to be grounded; this in turn means that, unlike traditional shielding, transmission bandwidth is not affected, but still provides adequate protection against NEXT.
WARP technology is a combination of this type of “interrupted” shielding and symmetrical signal transmission. The symmetry of the signals eliminates the interference that affects both fibers (common mode interference); only the difference between the two fibers of a twisted pair is evaluated. All the interference that might affect only one of the two fibers is caught by the twisting of the fibers and to a large extent by the special shielding.
40 Gbit/s over 550 m fibre optics
In 2011 R&M set a new record for data transmission using fiber optics: In Zurich, it demonstrated for the first time an error-free 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GbE) transmission via a 550-metre multimode cable with nine MPO/MTP® connectors. This beat the previous benchmark by approximately 60 percent as well as significantly outperforming the parameters defined by the IEEE 802.3ba standard. The test ran for over six hours.
R&M produces the multi-cable connectors (featuring MPO/MTP® plugs) used in the test at its plant in Wetzikon, near Zurich. In the run-up to the demonstration the company enhanced its surface treatment process for the optical fiber ends as well as its quality control. The former involved refining the nanometer-scale end faces of the individual optical fibres in the connector, resulting in a transmission quality that goes way beyond the levels specified in the various industry standards.
Markets
R&M subsidiaries have been established, amongst others, in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria, Dubai, Singapore, India and Brazil. In many other countries R&M has distribution partners. R&M is very export-oriented, with around 70 percent of its turnover achieved outside of Switzerland.
Corporate Social Responsibility
R&M published its first CSR-report at the end of 2010, followed by its initial Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Level C report in the spring of 2012. R&M will publish, in the spring of 2015, its report according to the new GRI-standard G4. Due to its international growth R&M built a new corporate headquarter in 2010, the so-called "Cube" in Wetzikon, Switzerland. The building conforms to high-performance Minergie standards. It has a low-exergy HVAC system with zero use of fossil fuels, minimal electricity as well as rain water collection while energy is provided by a geothermal heat pump system.
Internationalisation
In September 2008 the group’s first management and logistics hub in the Asia-Pacific region came into operation in Singapore. The following year saw the opening of its Middle Eastern hub in Dubai while in the middle of 2011 R&M set up its Western European office in the Dutch town of Apeldoorn. An R&M assembly plant in the Dubai Airport Free Zone began manufacturing products for the Middle East/Africa (MEA) market and Asia in July 2012. In the Bulgarian capital Sofia the company opened an additional fiber optics production facility in October 2012. Also in 2012, the company opened its new Saudi office in Riyadh (capital city), in line with its regional expansion plans as well as its strategy of providing strong local customer support in Saudi Arabia.
Corporate Film
R&M received a Silver Dolphin at the Cannes Corporate Media & TV Awards for its corporate film which takes an entertaining look at the difference between intact and corrupt network packets. The film also gives industry outsiders a clear insight into the abstract concept of network quality.
50 Year Jubilee
In 2014 the company celebrated its 50th anniversary with several events at its headquarters as well as in the various sales offices. The first 50 years were also highlighted in an animation film.