Good collaboration doesn't just happen at the touch of a button. It grows with patience, coordination, and trust.
The initial contact with Caritas was quite unspectacular: it was over the phone. It started with a simple question about whether certain work steps related to our products could be carried out together. However, it quickly became clear that this required more than just an order and a delivery address.
For such a partnership to truly work, it requires mutual coordination, patience, clear processes, and several attempts. The tasks must be designed in such a way that they are well-suited to the employees – not the other way around. It is precisely this development, this shared search for the right path, that defines our partnership to this day.
New tasks are therefore not simply "handed off." They are discussed, tested, and adapted together. When a new item needs to be prepared, samples are created directly on-site. The group leaders, together with the employees, assess how the individual steps can be implemented in a practical and reliable way. Only when the process truly fits does it become a permanent workflow. While this step-by-step approach takes a little more time at the beginning, it results in a routine that both sides can rely on in the end.
The Wendelstein workshops are an institution that provides professional opportunities to people whose participation in working life is hindered by disability, accident, or illness. Working with such a workshop therefore means more than just outsourcing work. It means designing tasks so that they fit the people who perform them – and that good results and appreciative collaboration go hand in hand.
Today, communication takes place regularly, often weekly, sometimes even several times a week. MV-Versand delivers materials, collects finished products, and maintains close, personal contact with the group leaders. Short communication channels, clear agreements, reliable handovers: what began as a single inquiry has thus become a well-coordinated partnership.
In the next part, we will take a closer look: What products are actually created in the workshop – and why can this work not simply be replaced by a machine?
Would you like to learn more about our collaboration with the Wendelstein workshops? Click here for the previous parts of our story:
- What you don't see in the package | Handiwork at MV-Versand (Part 1)
