Dear PIKO Fans,

we are happy that you join us for a virtual tour of the PIKO premises!

The PIKO headquarters are located in Sonneberg, a beautiful town in the south of Thuringia. Our premises, where model trains and model buildings are manufactured, comprise a total of 15.000 square meters (3.7 acres). So there is enough room to guarantee efficient operational procedures.

If you call PIKO or decide to stop by at our offices, you are pretty certain to meet personal assistant Kathrin Schumann. Kathrin Schumann will always be glad to help you or to put you through with the appropriate section.
 

Martina Matthäi attends to the PIKO fans. She sees to all the requests and concerns of our customers. Many PIKO fans are likely to have already met Martina Matthäi at a fair.

PIKO fans should not hesitate to address themselves to Martina Matthäi in case they have any requests.

She is also responsible for the PIKO Hotline on Thursdays from 4 p. m. to 8 p. m. Call (+49) (0) 3675 / 8972-42.

Hanna Walther is responsible for the domestic completion of sales. She is the one who manages to have products which were ordered in the morning be delivered by the late afternoon. Therefore it usually does not take longer than 2 to 3 days after ordering until retailers receive the goods they ordered.

Daniela von der Wehd is the right-hand woman of our National Sales Manager. She creates and designs the PIKO website. Additionally, Daniela von der Wehd sees to it that all the magazines and journals always get the latest news about PIKO.
 

Melanie Huss is responsible for customers in industry who order advertising models. This very picture shows her talking to Robert Stumpf, manager of the pad printing section.
 

Jens Beyer is our National Sales Manager. He is responsible for the field service and is the one to talk to if there are any problems within the marketing and sales department.
 

Our Export Manager Karla Lind is accountable for all the PIKO products that leave Germany for any other country. She is also the person to contact for our customers abroad.

Christine Dorst handles the purchasing of all the different supplied parts which are necessary for the production of our trains and buildings.
 

Head of the purchasing section and in-company logistics Marie-Luise Gröger. She is also responsible for our major suppliers and our business partners in China.

Günther Heilmann is our Technical Director and therefore in charge of the most extensive area of responsibility. His job comprises everything that makes a PIKO fan’s heart swell: the development of new products, mold design and construction, and the production processes. His constant being in touch with the heads of the different sections is one key to a smooth procedure. The picture above shows Güther Heilmann talking to Ramona Rüger, head of the assembly section.
 

An important part of Günther Heilmann’s job as our Technical Director is to see the head of PIKO’s section for new developments Peter Goldschmidt and decide on the most efficient way to realize a plan for a new train. The picture above shows Günther Heilmann and Peter Goldschmidt discussing about the imprinting of a new product from December 2003: the diesel multiple unit “Desiro”.

Peter Goldschmidt’s job as our New Product Manager is to choose potential new products and to prepare the correct lettering of locomotives and cars. Peter Goldschmidt’s work is therefore decisive for the fact that our PIKO fans can always rely on the authenticity of the printings when buying a PIKO model train.

Heike Scheublein is in charge of the development and the design of our model buildings. She elaborates the buildings using a CAD system, writes the instructions for construction, and sees to the preparations for the launch of the production.
 

Whenever problems occur in the course of production or whenever new products are launched, Burkhard Müller is the one to talk to. He solves technical problems and examines whether new items meet PIKO’s requirements.

Annemarie Müller designs all kinds of printed paper: catalogues, brochures, leaflets, posters etc. She also fashions the cardboard boxes for our trains and buildings and is responsible for PIKO’s extensive pictures archives.

Please follow our Technical Director Günter Heilmann who would like to show you around in PIKO’s factory buildings.
 

At the very beginning of any model railway production there is the idea, the research, and the development. Right afterwards the mold and die construction becomes relevant. Many molds for models used to be produced in PIKO's own mold and die construction section until 2003.

However PIKO decided to outsource the mold manufacturing in order to have always access to the latest machines and to guarantee the best quality and precision of the molds. The companies in charge are specialized and have better opportunities to buy the latest equipment, because they can use their mold production to capacity running three shifts a day. Of course, PIKO does not need as many molds as would be necessary to be able to finance this. Our products would become too expensive. Since 2004 PIKO still has a section for the construction of manufacturing facilities and a toolroom. 

Peter Mertin manages both sections. He also sees to the external mold manufacturing companies.

Janus Györök is in charge of PIKO’s production engineering section.
 

An important stadium in the process of model train production is the production of the plastic parts. PIKO uses modern plastic injection molding technology and has the latest machines for this purpose. Uwe Kaletta checks a machine.

When starting a machine, it is very important to check if the plasic parts can be easily removed from the mold. Sandro Pertsch is examines if everything is working perfectly (picture below).
 

Harry Heß is also preparing an injection molding machine for model buildings (below).
 

Since there is an enormous number of injection molds, the storeroom for the molds is a frequently visited place. Hans-Jürgen Höfer supervises the storeroom. After being used, the molds have to be thoroughly cleaned and lubricated to prevent them from getting rusty.

In 2003 the new pad printing section and the new painting and varnishing section opened. The whole team with their head Robert Stumpf posed for the camera and for the guests at PIKO’s “Open House” 2003.

Before the PIKO trains are printed, every single component part is airbrushed. This procedure prevents the model trains from having a shiny, plastic-like surface.

In the airbrushing section, e. g. model train windows are being airbrushed.

Organization and coordination of the sequence of individual operations is of great importance for our employees in the pad printing section and in the airbrushing section. In the picture below, Robert Stumpf and his employees are discussing further steps to be taken.

In order to achieve a very precise and accurate printing on our PIKO models, it is extremely important that the pad printing machines are correctly set up. Mario Lenz is one of our masters in this area.

On the day of our “Open House“, many PIKO fans visited the pad printing section and were quite impressed by the precision of this printing method.

Our employees in the pad printing section always observe and check if the model trains are perfectly printed. Most of the time, it is necessary to use a magnifying glass, because the letters are extremely small, which is usually the case with a perfect PIKO model on a scale of 1:87.

Highly qualified employees in the assembly department put together the individual component parts. Every detail and every single part of a locomotive or a car, however small they may be, have to be where they are supposed to be. Only this way, we can guarantee that our products work perfectly.

Before the component parts can be put together, the burrs have to be carefully removed.

And before the locos and cars can be put into their packaging, they are put through a meticulous quality control. Every PIKO locomotive runs on a test track. That’s why our customers can always rely on the best quality when buying a PIKO product.

After the function control, all PIKO locomotives and cars have to undergo another inspection: a visual one.

The PIKO starter sets are particularly attractive for novices. On an assembly line, the locomotives, cars, and tracks are put into sturdy polystyrene packaging boxes.

The PIKO starter sets are put in attractive cardboard boxes.

In 2003 the new PIKO A-track system was launched. The tracks, too, have to arrive at the retailers and the PIKO fans in attractive boxes. PIKO employees carry out a final visual control before the tracks disappear in the boxes.

The PIKO model buildings run on an assembly line as well. Our employees check thoroughly if the plastic parts arriving from the injection molding department are complete and intact. Afterwards, the items are compiled and put into a PIKO box.

Kerstin Hornig’s job as head of PIKO’s well organized forwarding department is to quickly compile the products ordered by the retailers, to package, and ship them.

Our joiner Dieter Luther builds solid wooden boxes which serve to take entire layouts to fairs. His boxes guarantee that the layouts arrive intact.

One sight for the visitors of our “Open House 1999” was the so- called “Tradition Cabinet”. Our customer adviser Martina Matthäi created it for every visitor who is interested in PIKO’s corporate history. Therefore it is still located inside one of the factory buildings and accessible to visitors. Apart from the history of PIKO, the cabinet also illustrates the history of Sonneberg, the “Town of Toys”, between 1945 and 1986. Originally the texts and pictures were compiled by the VEB Piko in 1986. Since then the “Tradition Cabinet” has been very popular among PIKO fans taking advantage of our “Open House”-events and among visitors who opt for a tour of the plant during the year.

We hope that you enjoyed the little tour of our premises and that you got an insight into the production of our PIKO products.

We would be glad if this virtual tour made you feel like visiting the real plant. We would love to show you around in a group of other PIKO fans.

Visiting us, you will also have the opportunity to see the door of the smokebox of a BR 01. Our employees of the molding section attached it at the entrance of the factory buildings. This was done particularly for the first “Open House”-event in 1999. Before that time, the smokebox was located in the former PIKO premises in the center of Sonneberg. This “old PIKO building” was pulled down in 2001 and 2002.