We ask René Zünd, father of two daughters and CEO of the Feinwerkoptik Zünd AG, some questions:
How come that you lead Feinwerkoptik Zünd as a CEO?
My father founded the company 1991 as a family business near Buchs in Switzerland when I was 11 years old. I quickly realized that the sanding of lenses on my free Wednesday afternoons was more than an easy way to earn some pocket money. I instantly fell in love with “glass” as a material and with the optics industry as a whole. Turning 16 I started an apprenticeship with Leica Microsystems as an optical technician. Following that I did my bachelor′s and master’s degree in optical system engineering. After finishing my studies I joined Leica in Heerbrugg and started to develop surgical microscopes for ophthalmological use from 2005 throughout 2011. In 2012, I then joined the family business, as I wanted to focus more on developing entire optic and photonic systems.
What defines your work within Feinwerkoptik Zünd?
Since my arrival in 2012 we shifted our focus from a pure contract manufacturing approach towards integrating the entire value chain.
We started developing and producing optical and optomechanical assembly groups. With innovating those components, we started to enable our customers to add significant value to their products or to drive down manufacturing complexity.
Doing so I was and am still driven by two paradigms:
1. We enable through photonics
2. Smaller is smarter
Das heisst, wir wollen mit Photonics wichtige Funktionen von Produkten ermöglichen, wobei wir den Schwerpunkt auf die Miniaturisierung setzen und smarte Baugruppen schaffen.
So, we apply photonics to a wide range of problems and focus on our strength of small, efficient components.
Why do you focus on miniaturization?
Going small is a mega trend, driven by medical applications. Looking at chirurgical interventions every reduction in size or weight counts to hurt the human body just as little as possible. With our technology, we merge as many functions as possible into an energy- and size-reduced space. There is a lot of know-how and special equipment needed in the development and production of such miniaturized components, which we gained over the last 30 years. This is why our products can be found in robots or camera systems all over the world.
What were your biggest challenges as CEO up to today?
One of the biggest challenges for us was the currency crisis in 2015 when the exchange rate between Euro and Swiss Franc crashed. The Covid pandemic also hit the whole medical sector very hard but thanks to the flexibility of our employees we manged to handle those difficulties well.
One last question: Where and how do you recharge personally?
My wife and both my little daughters give me a lot of strength. Also, I do sports and exercise whenever I have a minute to spare. It also helps, that I never lost my passion for optics.
