in 1928, the organizational form of the company was changed to that of a public limited company which allowed for greater freedom of business management. the largest customer was still the knil, and the number of employees slowly recovered, before later falling back to 1200 in 1932 during the depression, despite an increasing demand for the company's civilian production, including lathes. the german re-armament of the 1930s also led to increases in production. in 1940, a plan was put in place to deny the nazis use of artillerie inrichtingen's facilities, but this plan was not implemented before the invasion.