As most readers will know, the bulk of Swiss watchmaking happens in the French-speaking part of the country. Those less familiar with Switzerland than Swiss-made timepieces might even think the whole place is French-speaking, or at least the majority. Such is the dominance of the Romandy that the casual watch lover might think Schaffhausen is a town in Germany. It most assuredly is not, and IWC is as Swiss as they come.
Everything is welcoming and warm; everything is also easy to follow, with a path laid out for where you can walk. In the images here, the grey area is where visitors walk, while the white areas are where the technicians, engineers, watchmakers and craftspeople ply their trade. This is a nice way to see everything and not feel guilty about invading people’s workspaces.
Moving back into the order of the tour proper, IWC takes pains to showcase its materials section, where there is that satisfying moment of holding rods of raw material in one’s hands. This is hardly incidental though because there is a slew of bar-turning and milling operations that take place in the manufakturzentrum, which all involve bars. IWC tells us that approximately 1,500 different components are made in the movement-component workshop itself.