“We believe that part-time schedules are an established strategy for bridging a long period of weakness,” Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser said on Thursday night in Munich, adding that this plan could last up to two years.

The company has already moved 7,400 workers to part-time work and will increase this number “significantly,” he said.

“The global economy finds itself in what is surely the worst crisis since the Second World War,” Kaeser said. “The crisis has come to Siemens, but we are not in the crisis.”

Many industries have not yet reached the bottom of the recession and Siemens will likely be affected by a shrinking customer base, Kaeser said.

“We will have a smaller market,” he said.