We ask Ren\u00e9 Z\u00fcnd, father of two daughters and CEO of the Feinwerkoptik Z\u00fcnd AG, some questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u201cglass\u201d 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\u2032s and master\u2019s 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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Since my arrival in 2012 we shifted our focus from a pure contract manufacturing approach towards integrating the entire value chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Doing so I was and am still driven by two paradigms:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. We enable through photonics<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Smaller is smarter<\/p>\n\n\n\n Das heisst, wir wollen mit Photonics wichtige Funktionen von Produkten erm\u00f6glichen, wobei wir den Schwerpunkt auf die Miniaturisierung setzen und smarte Baugruppen schaffen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, we apply photonics to a wide range of problems and focus on our strength of small, efficient components.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wir stellen Ren\u00e9 Z\u00fcnd, Gesch\u00e4ftsleiter der Feinwerkoptik Z\u00fcnd AG und verheirateter Vater von zwei T\u00f6chtern, einige Fragen: Wie sind Sie zur Feinwerkoptik Z\u00fcnd AG gekommen? Mein Vater hat das Unternehmen 1991 als Familienunternehmen in Buchs SG gegr\u00fcndet, als ich 11 Jahre alt war. Schnell merkte ich, dass mir das Schleifen der Linsen an meinen freien … Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":646,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aktuelles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feinwerkoptik-zuend.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feinwerkoptik-zuend.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feinwerkoptik-zuend.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feinwerkoptik-zuend.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feinwerkoptik-zuend.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.feinwerkoptik-zuend.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1406,"href":"https:\/\/www.feinwerkoptik-zuend.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions\/1406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feinwerkoptik-zuend.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.feinwerkoptik-zuend.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feinwerkoptik-zuend.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.feinwerkoptik-zuend.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What defines your work within Feinwerkoptik Z\u00fcnd?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Why do you focus on miniaturization?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
What were your biggest challenges as CEO up to today?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
One last question: Where and how do you recharge personally?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n