Establishment 1958
In 1958, Claus W. Hess founded his business consulting company in Mannheim. The business idea: functional industrial planning , which was to be offered as a complementary service alongside traditional business areas such as architecture, structural design and technical building equipment in industrial construction.
1960s
A new partnership
Together with his later partner Hermann Vischer, Claus W. Hess brought the necessary technical expertise into his team in 1964 and the business idea took off. Functional industrial planning was a sought-after service during the reconstruction of war-damaged factory buildings and the new buildings required by the “Wirtschaftswunder”, also known as the Miracle of the Rhine.
Revolution high-bay warehouse
Largely unnoticed by industry and the public, the first half of the 1960s saw a "great moment in logistics": the Europe-wide unification and standardization of a load carrier into the "Euro-Pool-Pallet". This standardization allowed new ways in material flow and warehouse technology and created the basis for i+o's first breakthrough: the organization and planning of the first high-bay warehouse for Beiersdorf AG in Hamburg.
I can't say that the Beiersdorf warehouse designed by i+o was the first high-bay warehouse in the Federal Republic of Germany and neighboring Central European countries, but it was certainly one of the first.
1970s
Planning “Germany’s largest washing machine”
The acquisition of Foodplan AG opened its other mainstay of i+o, food & catering planning. In addition to food supply, i+o expanded its planning activities to include the entire hospital supply center, which includes the large-scale laundromat. This led to the pilot project of a highly automated central laundromat for all Hamburg hospitals at the Eppendorf University Hospital.
1980s
World market leader in the planning of in-flight catering facilities
With Sky Chefs in the USA, i+o begins its activities in the planning of highly complex in-flight catering facilities at airports. This is followed by well-known customers worldwide such as British Airways, SAS, Swiss Air, Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Hong Kong Airlines and Korean Air.
1990s
Southeast Asia as an important hub
With the aim of opening up new markets in Southeast Asia, we opened our Singapore location in 1996. As the expansion of the Southeast Asian airports was pending, we had already been recognized as a neutral, independent specialist planner for the catering industry. As a result, we also received planning orders from Singapore, Malaysia, Korea, Hong Kong and China.
2000s
Europe’s largest high-bay warehouse in Bremen
Planning and realization of the largest fully automated high-bay warehouse to date with 132,000 pallet spaces for Tchibo, operated by Bremer Lagerhausgesellschaft (BLG). German Logistics Award of the BVL for Tchibo GmbH (2004).
2010s
Foundation of our location in Hong Kong
io-consultants (Hong Kong) Co. Limited was founded in 2013 to coordinate the project business in China. The responsible contact person is Tan Hang Seong from the Singapore office.
New branding: io-consultants and groundbreaking move
In 2013, we uniformly operated under the io-consultants brand worldwide. In the same quarter, we moved into the newly built passive house development in the Heidelberg Bahnstadt.
Two new locations
With the offices in Munich (2017, left picture) and Dortmund (2019, right picture), two new locations were added in a short time.
Foundation io-DigitalSolutions
In October 2018, we founded the new SAP consulting company io-DigitalSolutions GmbH, which offers comprehensive solutions for the optimization and digitalization of the supply and value chain. io-DigitalSolutions is a 100% subsidiary of io-consultants and emerges from the SAP and IT division of io-consultants and the SAP consulting company ParCon Consulting, which was founded in 1997.
