Heidenhain Corp. opened a new state-of-the-art building at its world headquarters in Traunreut, Germany. The new approximately 135,000 square foot facility is now in use for encoder assembly and R&D, and is the largest single investment in the history of Dr. Johannes Heidenhain GmbH. The construction of Heidenhain’s new building began in July 2004. Prior to that, many of the encoder assembly operations in Traunreut had reached the limits of their capacity. The production volumes of several product groups had doubled in the years prior, and some had even tripled. The automatic assembly systems for rotary encoders were running in three shifts, often in six-day weeks. The new building has five floors each with approximately 27,000 square feet, and currently holds about 600 employees. The basement is divided into three approximately equal areas: the assembly area for high-accuracy encoders, primarily for OEMs in the electronics industry; the long-term testing for product qualification during the development process; and the technical facilities. The ground floor and second floor houses the assembly area for linear encoders, rotary encoders and angle encoders. Large parts of the first floor are used for air recirculation of the production level below it; the remaining spaces provide break rooms for the production employees and offices for production planning and production engineering. The third and fourth floor of the new building offer space for the offices and labs of the R&D for encoder mechanics, R&D for encoder electronics, and encoder quality assurance. The complete process of encoder assembly and packing takes place on the same floor. This eliminates unproductive transports and storage that require additional accounting work. In several areas, the door-to-door times can be reduced.