At its three ultramodern production plants in Geneva, Rolex is already practising the watch manufacturing methods of the future. The management team of Wempe Jewellers paid the company a visit.

The Swiss are reputed to have a talent for impeccable organization and absolute precision, as well as a fierce passion for independence. The first two traits certainly qualify them for the manufacture of fi ne mechanical watches. But the third, their autonomy, is also an effective maxim for a successful modern manufacturer — as the Wempe Managing Directors and company owner Kim-Eva Wempe discovered during a visit to Rolex SA. The two companies — the Hamburg-based jeweller and the renowned watchmaker in Geneva — both with rich traditions, are bound by many years of successful partnership.

The Rolex production plants have undergone extensive restructuring and new construction in recent years: the headquarters have been expanded, and innovative new buildings constructed at several locations in Geneva. During their visit, the Wempe managers were taken on a tour of the ultramodern production facilities. Rolex set the course of its future development in the early sixties, and relocated its headquarters from the city centre of Geneva to the industrial zone in Les Acacias in 1965. Here, architects Addor et Julliard created a progressive showcase of industrial architecture: two angular towers made of concrete, steel, glass and aluminium. The buildings were primarily functional but also impressive, and they embodied the company’s desire to reshape its existing infrastructure. Traditionally, production had been carried out in small workshops dotted throughout the city, and these were brought under one roof in a modern structure in which management and production function just as efficiently and precisely as a Rolex timepiece. Nonetheless, the new headquarters soon became too small for the growing company. Between 1978 and 1995, Rolex therefore constructed two other buildings in Les Acacias.
Later, production plants were built in the suburbs, firstly, at Chêne-Bourg, which opened in 2000, and then at Plan-les-Ouates in 2005. These projects were followed by major expansion and renovation of the company headquarters in Les Acacias between 2002 and 2006. For aesthetic and climatic reasons, a new shell of tinted glass now envelops the original building. Beneath the glass, the original façade from the sixties, with its striking and symbolic appearance, was left intact.

Through a strategy of vertical integration, Rolex has, in more recent years, brought its suppliers into the company, thus reaching a 95 per cent rate of autonomy. Rolex now designs, produces and assembles almost all of its watch parts in-house, at its three production sites in Geneva and a fourth in Biel. The building in Chêne-Bourg, which was the first of the new structures to be completed, houses the workshops for dial production and gem-setting activities. All of the company’s administrative offices, as well as the workshops for final assembly of the watches, are at the Acacias site. Certain watch movements are delivered here, fully assembled, from the plant in Biel; other special movements are assembled here and then fitted into the cases that Rolex designs and manufactures, together with the bracelets, in Plan-les-Ouates. From the outside, with its dark glass façades, the new building in Plan-les-Ouates appears as imposing and severe as other production plants — but those like the Wempe managers who visit the building’s interior are amazed at just how light and transparent it is on the inside.

However, its most unusual feature is one that cannot be seen, only heard: the whooshing and whirring sounds in the corridors come from a 1.6-kilometre system of rails in the false ceilings overhead. Small cars speed along the rails transporting components to the workstations on demand, after fetching them from two vaults in the building’s five underground floors. Each vault measures 12 by 20 by 35 metres and houses a futuristic high-rise storage system - equipped with fully automated German technology — containing 60,000 compartments. Access to the area is controlled by an iris scanner which operates the heavy steel door and grille. Should the technical system in one of the vaults fail, the second one can continue to operate without interruption. Rolex has prepared for every contingency. Preparedness is also the watchword for the vast reserves of 904L, the special high-grade steel, particularly resistant to corrosion, used by the company. Not every batch of this metal passes the stringent entry inspection, but the production process must not be interrupted. For this reason, there is always a reserve of several tons of this special steel in the building.

Rolex also produces its own gold alloys in its in-house foundry. Approximately two litres, or 30 kilograms, of liquid gold are produced in each melting process, at temperatures between 1,200 and 1,400 °C. To produce bracelets, the gold is shaped into rods as thick as a finger, whereas watch cases are fashioned from long flat bars. Rolled up on wooden reels or stacked up like rough-grained bricks, this precious metal seems almost ordinary — but try to lift it, and its weight commands respect. The company’s desire for autonomy is not the only reason it processes its own gold. The special gold alloys created on site must meet certain special requirements. Everose is a perfect example. Conventional pink gold, which is composed of gold, copper and silver, loses its pink colour if it comes in frequent contact with chlorine, becoming yellower as the copper leaves the surface. But Rolex wanted to be able to guarantee that its waterproof Oyster watches would retain their pink colour even after repeated dips in swimming pools. In the Everose alloy, gold and copper are melted together with a two per cent admixture of platinum, which locks the copper permanently into the compound. This solution sounds simple, but it was the fruit of long and complex research in the company’s laboratories. Here, bracelet clasps from the development phase of Everose have been kept; these show matt spots that appeared during polishing. Magnified thousands of times under an electron-scan microscope, the clasps show tiny inclusions immediately identifiable through spectroscopic analysis as tiny residues of tantalum, used as a catalyst during the gold melting process. Modifying the process entailed in the production of the alloy eliminated these impurities.

Rolex has created the scientific basis it needs for comprehensive industrialization of the highest order. The company works with both prestigious academic institutions and with scientists that provide the expertise it requires. In addition to watchmakers and engineers, the research and development team of 280, includes 40 experts with doctoral degrees in a broad range of disciplines. Together, they carry out fundamental research and create technologies that can only be implemented within an integrated production process. The Yacht-Master II, which made its debut last year, is one example of the innovative mechanisms that have been developed. This timepiece offers a programmable countdown with a mechanical memory for the starting sequence of a regatta. It is programmed by means of the bezel, which is functionally connected to the watch movement; the new movement itself consists of 360 individual parts. An innovation of such complexity would have been virtually impossible to implement if Rolex had had to depend on a dispersed network of suppliers — and certainly not within the three short years it took to complete this ambitious project. The decorative elements are also the object of research; after all, the aesthetics of a watch should serve to highlight the excellence of the technology. For the movement of the rectangular Prince models, the designers came up with very intricate, Art Deco inspired guilloché motifs — a real technical challenge. A complex process of masking, sandblasting and lacquering was specially developed for the guilloché on the coloured dials. The stringent quality control in the Rolex workshops is scientifically exacting and extensively automated.

New products and current production series watches are subjected to extremely tough testing. It goes without saying that the test equipment includes water tanks in which the watches must demonstrate their legendary waterproofness. In Plan-les-Ouates a steel robot installed behind thick panes of glass is responsible for the “rough stuff ”. With a Rolex on its wrist, it performs human arm movements that are recorded by a scanner — gentle ones such as shaking hands and writing, but also rougher ones like banging a fist on a table or taking a swing at a golf ball. The complete two-day programme subjects the watches to the wear and tear they would normally undergo in the course of a full year. Next to the robot there is a constant click-clack as watch clasps are repeatedly opened and closed and chronograph pushers are activated thousands of times over. This is done by rows of “encliqueteuses” — not employees but tiny robots that check the long-term resilience of the watches’ external mechanisms.

The company’s pioneering developments include the PARACHROM hairspring on which the balance wheel — the heart of a watch movement — oscillates. The PARACHROM hairspring may successively replace hairsprings made of Nivarox, as it is not only less sensitive to changes in temperature, but is also shock-resistant and insensitive to magnetic fields. The patented secret behind the new development is not the alloy from which this delicate component is made, but the precise influx of oxygen during the manufacturing process. The threefold melting results in a bar of metal that is 30 centimetres long and one centimetre thick. Initially it is carefully hand-rolled, then pulled out by machines to a length of three kilometres. Two lasers monitor the wire as it passes through precise atmospheres and temperatures. In the final flat-rolling process, a tolerance of only one tenth of a micron is permissible; a larger deviation would make the watch movement practically uncontrollable. After the highly technical procedures comes the final and finishing, a series of processes that remain indispensable in the manufacture of a Rolex watch and give it the signature of a highquality timepiece. For example, the process of separating the hairsprings, which are wrapped in sets of three, requires a dexterity and a wealth of experience that no machine can possibly offer. Employees painstakingly pull the hair-thin wires apart, and the “regleuses”, or adjusters, as these women are called, carefully shape the final curves of the hairspring. It is true that the individual parts for the Yacht-Master II and the Cosmograph Daytona movements are automatically delivered to the workshops in the clean rooms at the Acacias site in a clearly defined sequence via conveyor belts; it is also true that the screwdrivers the watchmakers use are electronically regulated. But the more than 60 assembly steps still have to be carried out by human hands. Only the most practised horologists, with vast experience and dexterity, can install the balance wheel and quivering hairspring with a pair of tweezers thereby actuating the watch movement.

At the same time, Rolex has developed technology for processes that were long considered only possible to execute by hand. It has, for example, designed a machine that can polish the cases quickly and precisely. Nevertheless, no automated machine is capable of carefully and correctly setting the tiny appliqués, hour markers and the Rolex crown in the correct position on the watch dial. The three production facilities in Geneva were built with a view to eventual expansion and offer more than adequate space for additional skilled workers in the future. The only problem is that in the booming Swiss watch industry such skilled technicians are hard to find, even for Rolex. This reality, coupled with the demands of precision processes and rapid production, accounts for the high degree of automation. It furthermore frees the small group of experts from the simpler and repetitive work steps, allowing them to perform the many, more rigorous tasks required in the production of a valuable timepiece. Rolex treats its employees well. Many of them do not live in Geneva, preferring to commute to the city from their homes out of town.

With this in mind, the company has set up restaurants at each site. Generously designed spaces on the top floors of the buildings provide good meals in a pleasant atmosphere. In Plan-les-Ouates, the restaurant offers a spectacular view and access to the roof gardens of the building complex. Of course, the strictly geometric plantings have both aesthetic appeal and a practical purpose. As the plentiful rainfall soaks slowly into the soil, it helps to provide thermal insulation for the buildings. Rows of grapevines grow on the roof of one wing. The vineyard is certainly not big enough to supply the workforce with wine — Rolex has 7,000 employees in Switzerland — but it could be a start! As the visitors from Wempe leave the building, the staff is just leaving for its lunch break, and the development teams’ glassed-in conference rooms on both sides of the wide hallways stand empty. A fl ipchart in one of the rooms is titled “Solutions”. It all seems very Swiss, somehow.