Time for a
Quantum Leap

Jena, a small uni­ver­si­ty town nes­tled in a forest­ed val­ley in the Free State of Thuringia, enjoys a near­ly roman­tic set­ting. First-time vis­i­tors find it hard to imag­ine that the city of 110,000 is a long-stand­ing glob­al cen­ter of the optics indus­try. But any­one who joins Jenop­tik’s CEO Ste­fan Traeger on the roof ter­race of the Ernst Abbe high-rise build­ing quick­ly sens­es a few salient qual­i­ties. Things might be a bit small­er and more per­son­al here than in Sil­i­con Val­ley or Shang­hai, for exam­ple, but the atmos­phere at Jenop­tik’s head­quar­ters exudes the pos­i­tive vibrant appeal of a “new Ger­man econ­o­my” dri­ven by high­ly con­nect­ed engi­neer­ing excellence—along with a self-assured but solid­ly down-to-earth approach.

That was not always the case. When Traeger, a physi­cist born in 1967, became the chair­man of the exec­u­tive board in May of 2017, the com­pa­ny’s decades-long cul­ture began to change. Traeger is con­vinced that Jenop­tik can only forge ahead into a suc­cess­ful future if it is will­ing to embrace both a new era and the will to play a major long-term role on the world market.

When Ger­many was divid­ed after World War II, Jena was in the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic (GDR) with its social­ist gov­ern­ment and her­met­i­cal­ly sealed bor­ders from 1949 to 1990. Traeger, who was born and raised in Jena, gained his first pro­fes­sion­al expe­ri­ence with Carl Zeiss, the com­pa­ny that gave rise to today’s Jenoptik.

Traeger arrived with a clear plan that he has pur­sued sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly since day one, fueled by gen­er­ous lev­els of nat­ur­al charis­ma and pride. The plan is to trans­form the com­pa­ny from a broad-based indus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate into a focused tech­nol­o­gy enter­prise. Lean­er, more effi­cient, direct­ed toward its core areas of exper­tise, and with a pre­mi­um on innovation—these are the guid­ing prin­ci­ples for both the present and the future. Jenop­tik, which is list­ed on the stock exchange, has an enor­mous lever at its dis­pos­al. “The world needs ever more semi­con­duc­tors,” Traeger notes. “But there would­n’t be many at all with­out our prod­ucts. Most of the chips in this world will run into a Jenop­tik prod­uct some­where in their man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es.” One exam­ple would be the high-end lens­es from Jena that pre­cise­ly and reli­ably inspect semi­con­duc­tor struc­tures dur­ing pro­duc­tion process­es. Instru­ments of this type make Jenop­tik a near­ly indis­pens­able pro­duc­tion and sys­tems part­ner. The com­pa­ny, in other words, has an unchal­lenged pole position.

Jenop­tik cur­rent­ly has around 4,900 employ­ees world­wide, around one-third of whom work at its head­quar­ters in Thuringia. In 2021, the com­pa­ny post­ed sales of near­ly 900 mil­lion euros. It has come through the Covid pan­dem­ic remark­ably well thus far, with­out clos­ing its facil­i­ties and with­out a seri­ous decline in sales. It’s extreme­ly high-qual­i­ty stan­dards are rel­e­vant here, of course. High-per­for­mance optics is an indus­try in which qual­i­ty can stand or fall with a tiny speck of dust. “There’s hard­ly any­where safer than the clean­rooms where we make our prod­ucts,” says Traeger.

In addi­tion to com­pa­nies in the semi­con­duc­tor equip­ment sec­tor, Jenop­tik’s cus­tomers come from the auto­mo­tive, auto­mo­tive sup­ply, med­ical tech­nol­o­gy, and avi­a­tion and aero­nau­tics indus­tries. Its prod­ucts include lasers that per­fo­rate and cut door cladding in car pro­duc­tion process­es, devices that mea­sure speed in traf­fic con­trol sys­tems, and com­po­nents for space trav­el. One high­light is found in Per­se­ver­ance, the remote-con­trolled Mars rover. At Jenop­tik’s site in Jupiter, Flori­da, engi­neers devel­oped, installed, and test­ed dif­fer­ent types of high­ly unusu­al and mod­ern lens­es for it. Dust- and tem­per­a­ture-resis­tant down to minus 135 degrees Cel­sius, they are what make the bril­liant images of the red plan­et pos­si­ble. But Jenop­tik spe­cial­ists also have a hand in our ubiq­ui­tous every­day smart­phones. The com­pa­ny does not make the phones’ opti­cal com­po­nents, but it does ensure the qual­i­ty of their cam­era lens­es in pro­duc­tion process­es. “Dig­i­tal­iza­tion would hard­ly be pos­si­ble with­out us,” remarks Traeger.

Jenop­tik’s cor­po­rate claim is “More Light.” And its vision is “Brighter Futures with the Power of Light.” The com­pa­ny wants to enter a new era: the age of light. It is there­fore con­cen­trat­ing on the core field of pho­ton­ics: opti­cal process­es that trans­mit, store, and process infor­ma­tion. Its vision is firm­ly anchored in this field. And the focus is on research and development—in Jena and beyond. “By and large I try to pro­mote the aim of not devel­op­ing every­thing here at our main site but also in Shang­hai and Jupiter. Espe­cial­ly China is more than just a sales mar­ket for us. There, too, we encour­age the cre­ative poten­tial in our spe­cial­ists that we need for inno­va­tions.” In devel­op­ing new prod­ucts, the com­pa­ny lis­tens very care­ful­ly to the ideas of its clients. “In our role as spe­cial­ists, we’re all the more suc­cess­ful when we can help our cus­tomers con­vert com­plex prob­lems of a pho­ton­ic nature into prod­ucts that can be indus­tri­al­ized,” he says. But above and beyond that, the CEO is inter­est­ed in achiev­ing and main­tain­ing the right bal­ance between suc­cess­ful exist­ing prod­ucts and promis­ing inno­va­tions. “We want to direct even more of our ener­gies to areas where we’re real­ly need­ed. At the same time, we’re think­ing about what might not belong to our core busi­ness any­more. Maybe we should be draw­ing back from a few things in the future.”

That is the rea­son Jenop­tik divest­ed from its non-opti­cal mea­sure­ment sys­tems for grind­ing process­es. The cap­i­tal there­by freed up can help the com­pa­ny posi­tion itself inter­na­tion­al­ly, because Traeger views the Amer­i­c­as and Asia as “strate­gic growth regions.” It can also go into com­pa­nies like Berlin­er Glas Med­ical, which makes high-pre­ci­sion opti­cal com­po­nents for med­ical systems—a recent acqui­si­tion that is a near­ly per­fect fit for the portfolio.

When Traeger joined Jenop­tik in 2017, he and a new cul­ture moved into the almost mod­est look­ing “tower,” as the com­pa­ny’s admin­is­tra­tive build­ing is known to employ­ees. A cul­ture of open­ness. Traeger sees value in out­side ideas, also in clever minds and con­nec­tions with other com­pa­nies, both in the local tech­nol­o­gy park and abroad. More­over, this open­ness accom­mo­dates a vital cul­ture of mis­takes. Traeger prefers that his employ­ees “just do it” instead of “wait­ing for the next instruc­tion from the boss,” as appar­ent­ly often used to be the case. He also enjoys going to the cafe­te­ria with employ­ees from dif­fer­ent departments—“in order to learn some­thing.” He has a prac­ti­cal mind, pre­fer­ring to hear about what is going on rather than “watch a con­stant stream of Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tions with man­agers.” In the old days, all impor­tant deci­sions were made in the “tower.” In the eyes of the cur­rent CEO, that unnec­es­sar­i­ly slowed down a good num­ber of developments.

Jenop­tik’s CEO appears to find it eas­i­er than most peo­ple to fos­ter need­ed process­es of change. In addi­tion to a nat­u­ral­ly open and empa­thet­ic dis­po­si­tion, he is helped by his roots in Jena and his long-term famil­iar­i­ty with the high­ly spe­cial­ized pho­ton­ics indus­try. “It’s prob­a­bly true that peo­ple are more will­ing to put up with incon­ve­nient but need­ed changes from me than from some­one who comes from a dif­fer­ent place and field. Even if I some­times must voice unpleas­ant truths, I still count as ‘one of us.’ It’s impor­tant that we keep Jenop­tik as its own inde­pen­dent com­pa­ny. It might be the last one of its size in east­ern Ger­many.” Traeger points to the two-meter illu­mi­nat­ed blue let­ters spelling JENOPTIK on the top of the build­ing. “We must­n’t ever let these lights go out. I want to do my part to ensure that. I owe that to the town where I was born.”

Those words might look sen­ti­men­tal on paper. But that’s not how they’re meant. On the con­trary. Before com­ing home to Jena, Traeger explored a lot of the world and the indus­try. His entre­pre­neur­ial gaze extends far down the road. “The next log­i­cal evo­lu­tion­ary step in data pro­cess­ing is to replace elec­trons with pho­tons. Where elec­tron­ic process­es have already run up against lim­its, we’ll be able to do things with light,” he says. It stands to rea­son, there­fore, that he has long since been look­ing at the “next level,” name­ly quan­tum tech­nol­o­gy. “Jenop­tik has to be right out in front there.” Any­one who meets this engag­ing, plain­spo­ken physi­cist can well imag­ine that the desired quan­tum leap will indeed take place.