In Asia with high speed out of the price spiral: I know how it works!
Manager:
Mr.Karl Z.
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Customer:
Confidential
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Role:
General Manager
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Location:
China
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Turnover:
Euro 480 million (2018)
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Time frame:
3 years
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No. of employees:
approx. 1400
About the Customer
The client is a global market leader of
Low-voltage inverters, first producer worldwide with 400.000 inverters/ year (55% market share worldwide)
Electric Motors, first producer worldwide with 280.000 motors/ year (42% market share worldwide)
High-Frequency chargers
Karl reported to the Vice President and to the Board of Directors of the customer’s Group.
The client employs around 1,400 staff at 5 locations around the world, based in Italy, delivering products to the following applications, for example:
Material Handling: Group supplies the 10 top OEM’s in the Material Handling Industry: inverters, motors, vehicle control, smart electronics, and software.
Aerial work platform: The first three aerial work platform OEM’s worldwide, Group installs components. They supply the fully electric system (inverters, motors, and battery chargers) for full electric as well for hybrid vehicles.
Windmills: Most of the wind turbine generator suppliers adopt Group solutions for electric blade pitch control under severe environmental working conditions.
Hybrid/ Electrical BUS: The main European bus manufacturer has adopted Group solutions for its hybrid and electric vehicle product line. This manufacturer is working with the leading companies of this market to develop its next generation of vehicles.
High Power E-Powertrain: The group is the technological partner of the most important players to design the new systems for the Electric Power train of the future electric and hybrid buses and medium trucks.
Agriculture: They are a technological partner for big players to be a pioneer in substituting technologies.
Onboard Refrigeration (trailer or container): They are a competitive High-Performance partner for big players in mobile refrigeration.
Testimonial from Сustomer
President of Group:
Karl is a proven senior manager from a fast-paced manufacturing background and excellent English and good Chinese skills.
Karl focuses on customer service with a proven track record dealing directly with customers and distributors.
He committed to the following in equal measures:
Operational excellence
Commercial/business acumen with full P&L responsibility
Leadership skills and people development
Engineering focus & background
Karl possesses an above-average sense of responsibility beyond the own task and his firm specialized knowledge brought convincing working results. Furthermore, due to his experience, he is creative, flexible, and quick in decision making at all technical and commercial fields. He has a very high commitment to his job.
He is inspirable for new challenges and updated and extended the specialized knowledge at his own stimulus. He has always finished his tasks on time and good quality. His negotiation skills are proven outstanding.
His behavior to customers, suppliers, superiors, and colleagues had always been perfect, so he represented our company any time at our best.
I recommend him for a new position as General Manager again. I like to mention, the recipient may contact me for further information regarding this employee if necessary.
We thank him for his distinguished performance and wish him all the best for his future.
Situation (Challenge)
The Italian client bought the entire business from an American company, located in China. This unprofitable business needed to be turned around within a short time, relocated from former factory to a new one, build up relationships with current clients, local government, stakeholders, suppliers, and employees. Most of the employees sold by the former company, could not be used, need to be trained and developed or released, whereas unprofitable business sectors need to be investigated and new business plan to be developed.
Not only employees, but also old unprecise machines needed to be repaired, maintained, or replaced by a new state of the art ones. Skills in manufacturing, engineering, and purchasing to be developed to perform for targets in quality, time, and costs.
A restructuring and business development of the client’s plant required a RENT-A-MANAGER General Manager for China – the assignment was extended several times due to the excellent value being gained.
Solution (Achievement)
As well as negotiating new global supply deals, our rent-a-manager Executive prepared a future work plan for the client’s own procurement team going forward, to ensure further progress could be made and that the arrangements negotiated were sustainable. The cost of hiring the Executive was entirely self-liquidating.
The headcount reduction of the manufacturing and finance department, while ramp up the supply chain, quality, and maintenance department were completed on time and the Executive went on to find further synergies and cost savings.
In general, his activities were followed:
The build-up of efficient organizational structure and high-performance organization
Business expansion of sales, marketing, and Aftersales.
Cost reduction activities (supply chain, lean office, lean production TPS, Kanban, VSA/VSM, Andon, MES)
He participated in international conferences in the US, Sweden, Germany, and Italy to share his knowledge, success and to get new Group instructions.
The following departments were direct reporting to him: Engineering, Manufacturing, Maintenance, TPS, Supply Chain, IT, Finance, HR, Quality, SQE.
Due to his long working experiences in China in purchasing, tool shop, project management, lean and quality management, with his team, the client can confirm he has achieved the following outstanding results (extract):
Quality Management
External generator customer failure rate (6 months rolling) reduced from 4261 to 0.
External controller customer failure rate reduced from 1657 to 0.
Internal failure rate reduced from 117845 to 16413 (-86%)
Customer field returns reduced from 56 generators to 0.
Scrap rate reduced from 704000 RMB/month to 13000 RMB/month (-97%)
The company passed all 9001/18001/14001 audits at the first step.
Manufacturing & Maintenance
A Production line productivity increase from 9.36 to 12.86 pieces/operator/day (+38%)
Flowability at the generator line increased from 12.2 to 6.1 days/part.
Problem-solving workshops increased from 0 to 6/year.
The utilization ratio of machines increased from 84% to 92.5%.
Sales & Finance
Sales volume increased from 97 Mio RMB to 130.5 Mio RMB (+30%)
Operating profit increased from 56000 to 2.6 Mio RMB/month
Total labor costs reduced from 210 to 168 TUSD/month
Human Resource
Headcount reduced from 143 to 117 (-18%)
Absenteeism reduced from 8.02 to 0.48 % (-93%)
Staff turnover, reduced from 6 to 3.6 % (-40%)
The number of realized improvements by implementing the suggestion system increased from 0 to 283.