Author: Klaus F. Hepp

I use to call this tool my “You`re the boss” principle. Many of my friends and most of my companions, colleagues and employees already know this term very well from me. Actually I apply this tool during great part of my daily activities – as well during my private ones as also during all my professional ones. 

What the hell now does it mean? Well, it`s very simple. It is based on the assumption, that during most of the situations and activities in which You participate and act over a day, the leadership and responsability can be delegated – at least momentarily and partially – to somebody present, who has the highest experience, know how or whatelse ever capability amongst all those present for doing a certain job. And this person can be named “the boss” for that particular situation, activity and moment. It is not necessary, that all others – if the “superiority” of this person states clearly – brake their heads and try to invent the wheels. 

Let me give You an example. When my lovely wife is driving our car, I don`t spent any time and energy on asking myself, whether she is driving in the right direction or in the right way. I know that she is a very skilled and reliable driver and if she does not expressively ask for my support for finding the right way for getting to where we have planned to go, I just let her drive and enjoy my time for relaxing my brain, listening to music, thinking about things and looking at interesting situations outside, where we are passing by. 

Anyhow a car just needs one driver at one time. Actually a car only functions with one driver at one time. Therefore it has just one steering wheel and not two or three of these. Isn`t it this way? After such travels with my brain on “mute mode”, I can normally not remember, which way we had driven and which were the places, where we passed by. You might call this ignorant, but for me such kind of information is not relevant. It`s much more important for me, to let my brain relax for such a while without filling my memory up with in the end useless and unnecessary information.  

For sure this is a very simple example, but You can easily translate it to much more complex situations. If in a professional situation a certain decision has been taken and the person chosen for doing certain things is a person of Your trust and with knowingly great experience and expertise, why should You spent Your own brain energy on following, questionning and controlling each decision, activity and moment of this person? Better let the person do its job and check out certain discrete intermediate points of progress and targets achievement. 

I am strictly of the opinion, that – if You deal in the right way with the right people – You can focus Your own energy and activities much smarter on subjects and activities, for which You can objectively be considered as “the boss”, means where You knowingly and acceptedly are the expert and have the highest know how for taking certain decisions and doing certain activities for the team. 

If You apply this concept consequently to all Your daily private and professional situations where this makes sence, You can relieve Yourself from a lot of stress and secure great part of Your energy for what You consider as Your real, Your important activities and interactions with all others. And it means, that You very actively empower the others, to play their full roles fully responsible. But it also means, that You clearly and outspokenly demand them to assume their assigned responsabilities and to actively play the expected roles within their ofical functions and that You make them aware of their total accountability.

My own experiences with this style of life and job management so far have been highly positive and successful and I really practice this consequentially whenever and as far as possible I can. And this reminds me a little bit of the saying of one of my former bosses. He – to my great surprise at that time – told me “You can much better work together with lazy people than with hard-working people because lazy people want to get their jobs done as fast as possible. The hard-working people don´t come to an end because they like it too much to continue to work.” 

On the pictures in the collage above You can see me together with my 3 actual “bosses” – together with my lovely wife Selma in the garden of our house in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, together with my dream management team at the reception hall of our fantastic company Vulkan do Brasil in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, and together with my wonderful and highly respected boss Sven Oelert, CEO of the Vulkan Group, at the “Plaza de las Armas” in Lima, Peru. 

With the above shared experience, the big challenge for me is permanently, to keep all my three “bosses” happy with me, which unfortunately is not always possible. And all 3 possible variants of “2 against 1” are not really favorable. Just imagine each of these! Not thinking about the variant “3 against me”, which almost implies to commit sucide and which definitely is not an allowed option for me.

Before I finish my todays post, I would like to share this wonderful music video from 1976 of Paco de Lucia`s famous “Entre dos aguas” guitar play with all of You:

“Entre dos aguas” is an instrumental flamenco rumba created by the Spanish guitarist Paco de Lucia, included as the first single on the album “Fuente y caudal” 1973. It was recorded with two guitars (the second played by his brother Ramón de Algeciras), with a bass  and a bongo, instead of the traditional palmas played on the rumbas.

At first the album did not have much commercial success, being practically discontinued in a few months. But Jesus Quintero, his representative at that time, and several other journalists were determined that this piece of music be heard on the radio. They convinced the record company to edit it as a single, going on sale in 1974.

As a single, “Entre dos aguas” sold more than 300,000 copies, being a gold single in 1976, and was 22 weeks at the top of the sales charts in Spain, catapulting the guitarist’s career.

I personally got to know with classical Spanish guitar music and also with Flamenco music during my two and a half years as Managing Director at Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s “La Toja” cosmetics plant in La Coruña, Galicia, in the north of Spain during 2000-2003. Actually I came into contact with this kind of music during my frequent weekends in Madrid, but I had the unique opportunity, to listen to Paco de Lucia playing his guitar live at a concert in Barcelona, shortly before I left Spain for Mexico mid 2003. But I took my passion for this wonderful music, which lasts until today, along with me to Mexico and from there 6 years later to Brazil.

I am terribly curious now, to hear Your opinion and comments about my above described personal philosophy and life and job management experience and practice. Looking forward to meeting again with You soon. 

  

In October 2018 I participated together with my Vulkan do Brasil colleagues Josias Leal (josias.leal@vulkan.com), Development & Engineering Director, Marcel Moraes (marcel.moraes@vulkan.com), Development Manager, Julio Leite (julio.leite@vulkan.com), Development Engineer, and Ferdinand Senske (ferdinand.senske@vulkan.com), VP Operations, upon indication of  my friend Mauricio Muramoto, President of the VDI Brasil (https://www.vdibrasil.com/) in the fantastic “23rd International Seminar for High Technologies” in Piracicaba, a city of 300.000 inhabitants at about one and a half hours car drive distance away from Itatiba, where our company is located. 

The “International Seminar for High Technologies” (https://scpm.eng.br/seminario/en/) is beeing organised since 1996 once per year by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus Schützer from the Methodist University of Piracicaba (UNIMEP) and his team of colaborators and aims at the dissemination of information about new technologies and innovative processes. 

Prof. Schützer, due to his own scientific work experience during 7 years as researcher at the Institute of Production Engineering, Management and Machine Tools at TU Darmstadt, still has very strong links there and he succeeds every year to invite high ranking speakers from TU Darmstadt and other German universities and research institutes to his outstanding “International Seminars for High Technologies”. 

One of the speakers during the event which my colleagues and I attended, was Prof. Dr.-Ing. Eckhard Kirchner, Head of the Institute for Product Development and Machine Elements (PMD). His exciting presentation under the title “From mechanical components to intelligent systems”, in which he explained actual development trends in mechanical (mechatronic) engineering and the development of integrated systems of mechanics, sensors, actuators and controllers, called very much our attention and directly after his speach we approached Prof. Kirchner, presented ourselfes and showed interest in a more detailed conversation with him and his team at TU Darmstadt.

This was the beginning of our wonderful Brazilian technology development cooperation with Prof. Kirchner and his team at the PMD Institute in Darmstadt, Germany. Less than two months later Georg Martin, one of the closest colaborators of Prof. Kirchner in Darmstadt, came to our plant in Itatiba upon our invitation, where we presented to him our own development team and projects and where we identified fields of interest for a potential technology development cooperation between both parties.  

At the beginning of 2019 we signed contracts and our technology development projects started under the lead of Josias Leal and coordinated by Marcel Moraes on our side and under the lead of Prof. Kirchner and coordinated by Sven Vogel,  on the side of TU Darmstadt.

The Technische Universität Darmstadt (https://www.tu-darmstadt.de/index.en.jsp, official English name Technical University of Darmstadt, sometimes also referred to as Darmstadt University of Technology), commonly known as TU Darmstadt, is a research university in the city of Darmstadt, Germany. It was founded in 1877 and received the right to award doctorates in 1899. In 1882, it was the first university in the world to set up a chair in electrical engineering. In 1883, the university founded the first faculty of electrical engineering and introduced the world’s first degree course in electrical engineering. In 2004, it became the first German university to be declared as an autonomous university. TU Darmstadt has assumed a pioneering role in Germany. Computer science, electrial engineering, artificial intellgence, mechatronics, business informatics, political science and many more courses were introduced as scientific disciplines in Germany by Darmstadt faculty.

The above collage of pictures shows Josias, Marcel and myself together with the TU Darmstadt team. On the picture on the right side in the middle I am together with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus Schützer and Mauricio Muramoto. On the picture in the lower right corner Josias Leal and I are together with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Eckhard Kirchner. 

I hope, this was interesting for You. For me it is amazing, how easily and successfully we Brazilians manage to establish contact, friendship and cooperation with such wonderful and highly experienced people and prestigious institutions so relatively far away from our small town Itatiba in the interior of  the state of Sao Paulo. 

As lessons learned I can resume, that the key factors for such success stories are undoubtedly openness, networking, friendships, iniciative, courage, risk acceptation, persistance, discipline and willingness to work hard. And another decisive factor is clearly the speed of action. Things must be made happen in short times. Today`s business (not only) world has become extremely fast and dynamic. Slowlyness has turned into a success killer. But no doubt – although things need to be done very fast, they must be done securely, in a controlled manner and without too many – and much less: repeating – errors. 

I wish You lots of fun and success for all Your today`s activities and hope, to meet with You again here tomorrow for my next post. 

 

I mean, I personally love these sunny, warm and dry days. And for the refurbishment of my house and garden areas which are continuing still, this is a present from heaven. But seen from a general and global climate standpoint, it starts to really worry me. 

Yesterday I had a chat with my friend and former colleague at Henkel`s Corporate Engineering Department (this doesn`t exist any longer) Gerd Bösemann, who still lives on the outskirts of Düsseldorf with his lovely familly. Gerd is an excellent process engineering specialist and from 1989 until my departure to Sao Paulo in June 1996 we have been working jointly upon several capital investment projects for Henkel`s detergent and chemical divisions over there in Germany, for which I had been named as Project Manager and where Gerd was the Lead Process Engineer in our project teams. 

Of the multiple projects for the extension, optimisation, transfer and new built of production plants for Henkel`s different consumer and B2B products, the installation and start up of the completely new huge factory for the production and filling of all liquid detergents and household cleaners for the European markets was the most spectacular one. 

On the picture in the lower right corner, You can see my friend and former colleague Gerd Bösemann on the front end of the table. On the picture on the lower left corner I am together with Dr. Gruber, my former boss during my time as Technical Manager at Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s very big flagship plant for hair colorants in Viersen-Dülken, Germany, where he was the Managing Director and where I took over responsability for all engineering, maintenance and general technical services.

Immediately after the fall of the wall in Berlin, Henkel had been reawarded for a symbolic prize its, besides the main factory in Düsseldorf, second biggest and second oldest detergent factory in Genthin in the eastern – former communist – German state of Saxony-Anhalt. And satisfying the massive respective expectations of the politics and local public, Henkel decided to do some massive investments and create lots of new jobs over there.

The first big investment project, which a group of colleagues from my department executed, was the installation of a completely new detergent powder plant incl. spray tower and all other necessary production, filling and packaging processes.

When this powder detergent project had already advanced for more than a year, I had been named as Project Manager for the construction, the transfer of the manufacture of all these products from the manufacturing plants at our factory in Düsseldorf and some other places to Genthin and for the start up of the new big liquid detergents and household cleaners plant on the greenfield there.

The total investment for the new factory was about 80 million D-Marks (the Euro just became introduced as the new currency in Germany and the other EU countries from 2005 on) and thus this was one of Henkel`s major capital investments at that time.

During my yesterday`s chat with him, Gerd confirmed to me that the technology which we had developped for large scale industrial utilisation at that time, still continues state-of-the-art. Actually the idea behind the construction of this factory was, to combine several exciting new technologies and create a completely new manufacturing, filling and packaging process for this kind of large volume products. 

You must imagine, that such products are beeing produced and sold in very high numbers. I don`t remember the figures well, but I would guess, that we easily produced about 200 million finished goods units there per year for the different markets all over Europe and – some of them also for international exportation. 

The core of the new mixing technology were completely new, highly sensored and automised “continuous mixing” machines with series of interconnected dosing pumps, in-line mixers and several heating and cooling steps. This new technology substituted completely and thus revolutionised the so far common state-of-the-art “batch mixing” technology for these products.

And on the filling process side for these products also completely new technical concepts had been chosen. Our dream since long years had been, to “in-line” mix and fill these products, practically without intermediate storage and buffers for both products and packaging. In the case of the packaging this meant the “in-line” blowing (PE)  resp. thermoforming (PET) of the huge quantities of bottles needed. But for sure this did not really work without any at least small storage buffers in order to protect the processes against unplanned stoppages and interruptions. 

In fact – due to the high variety of the different products and also of the primary packaging items and because of the very high volume of production of these – the whole technology was very complex and had to fullfil the highest requirements regarding efficiency, productivity and reliabilty. 

Gerd and I, together with all other project team members and our colleagues from the Central Detergents Technology and Application Engineering Departments at Henkel`s HQ and main factory in Düsseldorf, Germany, discovered and developped all these new technologies in all details in extremely close cooperation with our suppliers for this kind of machinery and equipment. 

The installation of the whole factory – from the first foundation works on until the oficial closure of the project, the handing over to the “owners” and the public inauguration took us a little more than 2 years time. 

To be very frank and sincere – all kinds of shit and bad surprises, which You can imagine, had happened during this time. We altogether were often very desperate and we suffered lots of backslashes during all the time. But in the end we found solutions for all problems and made the whole project a real success.

The most exciting experience for me during the next years was, to pick up bottles of the products from “our” factory in Genthin in the shops and look up the manufacturing codes, where we – as insiders – could discover on which of our filling lines these products had been manufactured and at which dates and hours. 

From the beginning of this incredible project on I flew from Düsseldorf,  where I had my office, to Berlin, Tegel airport, almost every week and drove from there through the big, beautiful forrests all the way through Potsdam and Brandenburg to Genthin. Those were the crazy times in the first years after the fall of the Berlin wall. All the centuries old prussian army barracks along my way through the forrests were still full with Russian soldiers, which started to leave Germany for home. I met many of them – and also their civilian companions and familly members – along the roads, where they were selling their uniforms and whatelse You can imagine, for making some real money before beeing packed on days long military trains home to their own country. 

After the project in Genthin I got started on new projects in Manchester, UK, and in Belvedere, in the south of London, and Gerd joined teams for other projects within the Henkel world. Thus we never worked together again from then on, but – for sure – our friendship continued and whenever I needed help for solving difficult process technology questions, I called him. 

In June 1996 I left Düsseldorf for getting started on my new function as Project & Engineering Department Manager at Henkel`s chemical plant in Jacarei, Sao Paulo, Brasil, which later-on became Cognis and now belongs to BASF. Thus another important development step for my life and career started. 

Since then, Gerd and I have met again only once – upon the wonderful party night, to which I had invited lots of  my friends and former Henkel colleagues on ocasion of my 2nd marriage in January 2004 in the famous bar & restaurant “Uerige” in the “Altstadt” of Düsseldorf. Believe me – we had fun there. 

As You can see, although I only had really worked as a detail engineer during the very first few years of my professional career, technology and industry have always been part of my interest and today as President of Vulkan do Brasil, we attend many of our industrial customers like in mining, iron & steel, cement, paper & pulp, sugar and many other industries with our great portfolio of all kinds of mechanical power transmission components and I personally find myself confronted there with lots of technologies, processes and machinery, with which I have somehow made own practical experience during my former career steps. Maybe this is the reason, why I am so much passionate about our business and service for our worldwide customers.

Hope You found this interesting. Looking forward to meeting with You here again tomorrow in my blog. 

Since the ofical outbreak and spread of Covid-19 in Brazil during the middle of March, we have implemented several protection measures and rules within our company and in our factory.  Our “Covid-19 Committee” (VP Admin, VP Operations, HR & Special Projects Director and myself) meets every two days for half an hour online and follows all developments in our company and in Brazil and the rest of the world closely and takes all necessary corrective decisions. This works excellently since we started with it.

One of the first measures implemented at our factory in Itatiba and at our sales & engineering offices in Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Colombia, and Mexico City was to sent approximately 50 of our employees in the administrative, sales and engineering areas to work from their homes. Against all our initial doubts and fears, this worked fantastic from the first day on and until now. None of the major concerns which worried us, when we started with it, really came true. In the contrary – since the very beginning of our new home office routine, most of us are very satisfied with it and state very positive results for us as single private persons and also in our functions as employees for our company. 

Within one of our “Covid-19 Committee” meetings the idea came up, to make an enquiry about this very interesting and so important subject. With the help of an external consultancy an anonymous employee inquiry procedure was set up and all employees doing home office were invited to participate and asked to share their experiences and opinions. 

Approximately 85% of all our employees doing home office sine thye middle of March participated. The external consultancy summarized the inquiry result for us. We had asked them before, to give us the overal results of all employees to each of the 15 questions and to give us seperately the added up results only for the members of our “Key Players” group of employees (supervisors, managers, directors, VPs) because we wanted to find out, whether our Key Players saw things differently to how all employees see them. 

The results were very interesting and showed a very clear picture with regards to the perception of the new home office routine by our employees. There was practically no “gray zone” of answers. And – and this makes me very proud – there was practically no difference between the results of the inquiry answers by all our employees doing home office and our Key Players group. 

Here some of the summarized inquiry results:

90% of all inquiry participants find the new home office routine good or even very good

Only 6% of all inquiry participants do not like it.

100% of all Key Players find it good or even very good

26% of all inquiry participants suggest to continue with 5 days per week of home office even after the end ov Covid-19

65% of them suggest to continue with 3 days per week

8% of the Key Players suggest to continue with 5 days per week

73% of the Key Players suggest to continue with 3 days per week

94% of all inquiry participants and 93% of our Key Players find that our home office infrastructure incl. IT systems are functionning perfectly

94% of all participants and 92% of all Key Players find that the contact with their management, the continuous alignment in all questions which are relevant for their own work and the feedback by the management are perfect

100% of the participants and of the Key Players group find that our well established routinary leadership procedures and processes incl. all routine meetings are continuing perfectly

This is champagne for my soul. You can`t imagine how happy and proud I am because of this wonderful response from our employees. This clearly proofs that our wonderful internal cultural concepts of the “Swiss Clockwork” (I will present this in a future post) and “Swimmy” (see my post from July 17: https://klausfhepp.blogspot.com/2020/07/our-great-friend-helper-swimmy.html) work strongly.

During the above mentioned inquiry we also gave our employees space for mentioning comments and opinions and for suggestions and some of these were as follows:

– Much higher work productivity and lower spendings because of the now missing transfers from home to the company and back home from there again

– Much higher quality of live with more convenience in a favorable personal environment, flexibility and much more and more frequent contact with the familly

– Much higher work efficiency because all meetings have to be preagended and all participants need to prepare all subjects more properly

– Much higher dynamic and agility of our work processes

As negative aspects our employees mentioned the following points:

– Missing means for travelling, especially to our customers

– Missing personal, physical meetings and contact with the colleagues

– Missing opportunity to practice “Go & See” (I will share some own experiences with this very important and highly efficient management concept) 

And we alltogether agree and are conscious, that to do work from out of our home offices requires a very strong and continuous self control and discipline from all of us. 

This was basically, what I wanted to share with You today. I hope, You found it interesting and I am curious, whether some of You will share their own experiences and opinions about home office with us.

As You can see from the collage of fotos from my offices at the different companies and in the different countries where I have been working during my career, I have made large experience with all types of offices. Some were really luxury ones – like my beautiful office at Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s “La Toja” factory in La Coruna, Galicia Spain, and my office at BOS Automotive in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico – and some were totally different – like my first open-plan office when I joined Henkel`s corporate engineering department in Düsseldorf, my construction container office and later-on my temporary office in the warehouse at Irapuato during the construction of our huge new plant. 

Like always in live, whether You are happy or not depends on the coincidence of multiple factors. A nice office alone does not make a shit job better for You. And if You like Your company and love Your job, You don`t mind if Your office has some deficiencies. Would You agree on that? 

Please enjoy the rest of this wonderful – at least here at my home in Vinhedo – sunday and prepare Your energies for tomorrows start of the new week. 

Since I have received so uncredibly many wonderful messages in linkedin from friends, business partners and general contacts from all over the world on my birthday, I had originally decided, just to answer to all these collectively in my birthday post. But this morning I came to the conclusion, that this would be unfair and I changed my mind and decided, to answer personally all these highly appreciated messages. And I started directly with it, but because of the really huge quantity of greetings messages, I did not even get through a third of all these until now. 

During our annual “Global Management Meeting” in November 2018 at our HQ in Herne, Germany, the CFO of the Vulkan Group (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding) – meanwhile Sven Oelert has become our CEO –  to whom I report luckily and proudly, invited me to visit our sister companies in South Africa and Australia and to develop a project for strong colaboration between our three “Southern Hemisphere” companies Vulkan Australia (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/australia), Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil) and Vulkan South Africa (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/drivetech/vulkan-companies/africa) and for a joint market expansion project with our industrial products on the Australian and African continents. 

This was due to the fact, that Sven liked very much the success which we had shown during the years 2015-2018 with the massive expansion of our industrial sales from Brazil, where we have since several decades become one of the market dominators with our wide portfolio of locally developped and manufactured couplings, brakes and backstops for all kinds of industrial mechanical power transmission applications, like in mining, iron & steel, cement, sugar, pulp & paper, oil & gas and many other industries, to the whole Latin America region including Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and all South America. 

The analogy was even more given, because all our main customer industries like mining, steel, cement, sugar etc. are all definitely present allover the Australian and African continents as well and we clearly saw the opportunity, to enter massively these new market regions for our industrial division Vulkan Drive Tech (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/drivetech) with our proven and highly competitive products and services.

Shortly after my return to Brazil from our Global Management Meeting in Germany I mounted a core team of close colaborators at Vulkan do Brazil, with whom I got immediately started on the brandnew “Vulkan Southern Hemisphere” project. And at the beginning of December 2018 we flew to Johannesburg and Cape Town for presenting ourselfes to our wonderful South African colleagues. We spent just an initial week there and kicked our new project on the African continent off. Many further trips and joint activities to South Africa and many other African countries would follow during 2019.

Once back to Brazil, we changed our suitcases, finished some preparations and left again for Guarulhos, Sao Paulo International Airport – this time on the way to Sydney, Australia.

I can tell You with all my respect, that travelling from Sao Paulo to Sydney is a real challenge. For flight cost reasons we decided, to fly from Sao Paulo to Dubai and to continue from there to Sydney. Door (of our houses in Sao Paulo) to door (our hotel in Sydney) this took us about 40 uninterrupted hours of travelling time. 

We have optimized this in the meantime and choose flights via Santiago, Chile, to Auckland, New Zealand, and from there to Sydney, which take us “only” a little more than thirty hours of travelling and I can tell You, that this already makes quite a big difference for You as traveller. Even more, when You are travelling in economy class. But You know – hard men & women, hard live……

I did these initial visits to our colleagues in South Africa and Australia together with my close colaborator and friend Marco Santos, HR & Special Projects Director of Vulkan do Brasil, and a colleague from our brazilian financial controlling department. The reception by our colleagues in bouth countries was overwhelming. We made great friends there immediately and started quickly to design our first joint “war plans”. I think that what had broken the initial, natural “ice” between us, was the fact that I had explained to our colleagues at Vulkan Australia and at Vulkan South Africa upon our first meetings, that we Brazilians had not come there as “invasors” or with any “master” approach, but as “brothers in arms” and that our intention was, to work closely and trustfully together with them – and learn from them!

For me Sydney at the first glance was a very beautiful, exciting, lifely and very international place. Lots of young Brazilians earning money there in all kinds of service jobs. And for sure – many Asian, especially Chinese, people living there and doing all kinds of business. 

The Australians have a very easy going live style and – no matter from where You get there – You as a stranger will hardly find difficulties to get welcomed there in an extremely friendly manner. Australia – not only weather wise – can truly be called the sunshine country.

But I must admit, that until today I have serious problems with the adaptation of my inner clock to the time difference of +13 hours when travelling there from Sao Paulo. In the early afternoon I feel extremely exhausted and want to sleep, but when the Australian night comes, I am fully awake and don`t find easy means to sleep. And even then I still can`t sleep there normally more than very few hours. Thus during all my travels there I have been sleeping very little, which “kills” You after a couple of days. There has been no other travelling destination around the globe so far for me, where I have encountered similiar difficulties to adapt.  

Stephen Samson (stephen.samson@vulkan.com; +61 477 018 277), Managing Director of Vulkan Australia (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/australia) and his wonderful team of colaborators gave us a warm welcome and introduced us to their business and to the economy and industry in Australia in general. 

Even for us coming from the huge country Brazil it was impressive to see the size of the Australian continent and to understand the travelling distances between the major cities and regions, where the different businesses and industries are concentrated.

Although we were only scheduled for staying at Sydney for one week, Stephen and his team members managed to give us not only a deep look into their company, business and into the general market situation in Australia, but also allowed us to enjoy a little our first stay in beautiful Sydney and the coastal region, where our local subsidiary is located. For sure we went out for dinner at night in Darling Harbour, walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, visited the Opera House und went up to the Sydney Tower Eye. 

For me as quite active global German associations networker it was a must, to visit the German-Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (https://australien.ahk.de/en/) in Sydney, where I started my wonderful friendship with Jürgen Wallstabe, Manager Competence Centre for Mining & Resources. And for sure we – means Vulkan Australia – directly joined the AHK Australia as a new member company. Since then Stephen participates actively there, mainly in the activities of the AHK`s Competence Centre for Mining & Resources, which are extremely interesting for us as a mining industry supplier company.

Elisangela actually has two very important functions within our company. She`s our Marketing Director and at the same time she`s the Sales Director of our Vulkan Couplings division @ Vulkan do Brasil.

Vulkan Couplings (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/couplings) is one of the three divisions of the globally active Vulkan Group. For more than 130 years we have been developing, producing and marketing innovative system solutions for marine drive technology. We are the market and technology leader in the development of highly flexible couplings for marine engines, shaft systems and elastic mounts. Our customised solutions are characterised by high quality and innovation, as well as reliability and flexibility. Vulkan Couplings combines application know-how, cutting edge technology and professional competence with a strong commitment to research and improving on an ongoing basis the production process to ensure our world class status in delivering propulsion solutions to global engine manufacturers.

Vulkan couplings are found not only in main and auxiliary ship drives, PTOs, PTIs and boat drives, but also in stationary power plants used for permanent, temporary or emergency power supply. Generator couplings from Vulkan Couplings have always been the first choice for highly flexible coupling of diesel motors with generators. 

Capacity utilisation in terms of performance and duty cycle is usually high in stationary diesel power plants and CHPs, so the couplings also need to be extremely reliable and offer a long service life. Container and emergency generators and mobile sites, however, are operated on a temporary basis; they are used when the public grid fails or where failure of the grid would have grave consequences, for example in hospitals, chemical plants, server rooms and, last but not least, in nuclear power stations where the generators would ensure decay heat is removed in the event of disconnection or failure of the power grid.

Elisangela and her highly skilled and experienced sales & engineering team – from out of their offices at our factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, and in Rio de Janeiro – are responsible for the commercialisation of our products and services for the marine and diesel power generation applications all over Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia and Suriname. 

I know Elisangela since the day of my arrival at our wonderful company Vulkan do Brasil back in September 2014 and since then we have been working closely, nicely and very successfully together. 

She`s a great innovator and inspirator and in order to present her to You, I decided to refer to Marvel`s imaginative character “Spectrum” as described in the “The 16 strongest Marvel characters” (https://screenrant.com/10-strongest-female-marvel-comic-book-characters/): “Spectrum can fly at the speed of light, shoot lasers, and turn herself into one”. This perfectly fits to Elisangela and her highly important contribution to our great team success, which to a great part is due to our permanent high speed and agility with regards to what and how are doing. To do things very fast, but absolutely correctly – this has become  our speciality. And Elisangela undoubtedly has become one of the main contributors within our management team to this.

We have “fought” many  “great battles” together with our other team members during the last years and Elisangela has – on top of her important two key player roles for Vulkan do Brasil – been actively participating in our numerous activities and travels within our “Vulkan Southern Hemisphere” initiative with lots of participations as exhibitors and speakers in fairs, exhibitions and all kinds of other events allover Latin America, Africa and Australia, which she always organises perfectly together with her excelent brazilian marketing team for our Australian and South African colleagues and for ourselfes as the Brazilians.

I am very proud and happy, to have such an intelligent, experienced and motivated comrade in our management team and on our side. 

Today I will – together with my colleague and friend Marco Santos, HR & Special Projects Director of Vulkan do Brasil (mentioned in my post “Blood brothers” on July 7) – congratulate Elisangela oficially for the 10th anniversary of her joining of our company.  

Retention of our key performers is one of our highest objectives and we are very proud, that this has been working  extremely successfully since many years. We practically never have lost a key player during the last years and in general our employees are very happy and motivated, to make active and highly recognised part of our company and team. I am personally sure, that this is not only a question of the fair pay and open, colaborative culture, which we have created for all our employees. A very important supportive argument might also be, that we are ongoingly very successful, increasing our market participation – even during adverse times – and thus permanently offering development opportunities for our employees. Who in this world would not want to make part of such a winners team?

And I should not forget to mention, that Elisangela has just been elected as Vice President for the period 2020-2022 of the Sectorial Chamber for Marine Offshore and Onshore Equipments (CSENO) of ABIMAQ (http://www.abimaq.org.br/site.aspx/abimaq-en), the Brazilian Association of the Machinery and Equipment Industry, where she already represented Vulkan do Brasil during many years actively and successfully. 

Here`s the right song for this post – “Same” from Robin Schulz  – expressing wonderfully our dynamic spirit and high speed drive:

I wish You a great and successful beautiful day. See You – hopefully – back here tomorrow !

Although I had already heard about these, I was not really aware – and much less in detail – of the United Nation`s “17 Goals to Transform Our World” (https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/) published recently as a response to Covid-19 or, as expressed so nicely and clearly by António Guterres, the UN-Secretary General: “We need to turn the recovery into a real opportunity to do things right for the future”.

Thus the UN globally appeals: “COVID-19 is spreading human suffering, destabilizing the global economy and upending the lives of billions of people around the globe.The pandemic an unprecedented wake-up call, laying bare deep inequalities and exposing precisely the failures that are addressed in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change. Leveraging this moment of crisis, when usual policies and social norms have been disrupted, bold steps can steer the world back on track towards the Sustainable Development Goals. This is the time for change, for a profound systemic shift to a more sustainable economy that works for both people and the planet.The Sustainable Development Goals are vital for a recovery that leads to greener, more inclusive economies, and stronger, more resilient societies.”

I really warmly recommend for of all of You, to have a detailed look at the UN`s 17 Sustainability  Development Goals. The achievement of each of these globally is very important for all of us as current inhabitants of this planet and especially for the future generations which will be living on earth and  which depend so much on our responsability and care taking. 

We at our company Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil)  have declared our conscienceness for the responsible contact with  the environment and careful utilisation of all natural ressources in our “Integrated Management Policy”, which has become the guideline for all our activities and business and which is also reflected in our ISO 14001 and ISO 9001 certifications:

“Vulkan do Brasil is developper, manufacturer, supplier and service provider for a wide portfolio of mechanical power transmission components like couplings, brakes, backstops, shafts, mounts, dampeners and many others for all types of marine and industrial applications as well as of components and accessories for refrigeration applications.

We are driven by the requirements of our customers in our different markets and persue all our business activities, commitments and goals following strictly the principles layed down in our Integrated Management System:

• we develop all our internal and external processes effectively and efficiently in order to achieve the quality requirements of our customers, to guarantee the profitability of our business and to maintain our permanent commitment towards continuous improvement 

• we develop all our activities committed to the protection of the environment, the continuous reduction of the accepted levels of the potential environmental impacts caused by our operations and the prevention of any environmental pollution

• we are always fully compliant with all applicable oficial laws, rules and regulations

• we create and maintain a stimulating professional and ethical work environment and company culture for all our employees, suppliers and service providers, which facilitates continuous improvement and innovation and contributes actively to the increase of our company`s success”

And this coincides perfectly, with what Mrs. Naomi Nwokolo from the United Nations Global Compact Network Nigeria commented during yesterday`s excellent AHK Nigeria webinar “Sustainable Development – Quo Vadis ?” –  The implementation of policies for the pursuit of sustainable goals policies in the companies depends heavily on voluntary aspects in the individual companies. 

For us there are no doubts at all with respect to this. Most of our national, regional and international customers have defined the same committments for themselfes and also persue similiar policies. We as a supplier of components, systems and services for globally active industries like mining, steel, oil & gas, pulp & paper, sugar and many others are permanently and actively developping new and advanced products and solutions for making their processes and operations safer, cleaner, more efficient and sustainable. 

Although our contribution – seen from a more general standpoint – might appear minor, we have defined and understand ourselfes as important contributors for the global achievement of the sustainability goals and for the transformation of our world. Finally everybody`s efforts count and all contributions for making the world better are important.

I hope You found this interesting and I would be even more than happy, if I created interest in You for looking up the “17 Goals to Transform Our World” on the UN`s webpage.

Thanks to Katharina Felgenhauer and the AHK Nigeria for the great “Insight Nigeria” online event. Looking forward to my participation in Your next webinar.  

See You here again tomorrow. 

To celebrate my own birthdays has always been a quite strange subject for me. To be true, there were so far only 3 birthdays in my life, which I was willfully celebrating. The first of these was my sixteenth birthday. But this was just because at that time in Germany from the age of sixteen on I was oficially allowed to smoke cigarettes – which I quit with twentyeight years forever, thank God. The really most important of all my birthdays was my eighteenth. This was by far the most important and longingly awaited for one and in the first week after having reached this age as “new adult” I started my car drivers licence course, for which You needed at least the age of eighten years as a German. The third somehow important birthday for me was my fifteeth birthday. I felt enormously proud to have reached this impressive age successfully and in strong health conditions and I enjoyed a really nice birthday weekend party over two and a half days and nights in a youth hostel at a romantic castle in the middle of the forests in the western German area, where I had been born so endlessly long before together with my mother, sister, wife, five children from my two marriages and plenty of friends from the different periods of my life. 

All other birthdays – to be frank and open to You – were not really important for me. I enjoy greatly great days. And if such a great day falls together with one of my birthdays, I can live easily with it. But I had always difficulties, to feel great on day just because it was my birthday. My wife and children did never really understand and accept this. But such small differences in opinion do not really hurt anybody.

But one of all my other numerous birthdays was really outstanding and I must therefore mention it here. At that time during 2007 I was working as Managing Director at the brandnew big assembly plant for interior parts for cars which I had installed and rampd up together with my great team of colaborators since 2006 on the greenfield in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico for BOS, a german autoparts supplier and global market leader in its segment. 

I swear I did not have the least clue, how my wife and my CFO and friend Claus Welker would set me up on my birthday, which in this particular year happened to be on a saturday. On the evening before, Claus rang me on my mobile fone and asked me, to meet him at my office in our factory on that saturday morning because of a – as he indicated – extremely important subject related to a serious financial problem at our company which he had just discovered and could not mention on the fone. No way out for me – I immediately confirmed, that I would meet with him in our industrial park at 8am. 

The other morning I drove to our plant for meeting with Claus at 8am, but I became quite furious, because Claus called me at 8:30am and let me know, that he had encountered a small problem and could not come for meeting with me before 9:30am. I did not really find this nice, but as I had no other choice, I held out at my office and did some work until Claus finally arrived at my office at 10:00 am. 

What drove me crazy, was that he did not really have any serious explanation for our emergency meeting. To be true, he was just fiddeling around and counted some minor things, which had nothing to do with the “big financial problem” which he originally intended to tell me. At about 11:00am I had enough of this children`s play, told him he should never again invent such stupid meetings for me and went home.

I really did not even think, that this was all intentionally constructed for keeping me away from our house for a couple of hours and when I arrived at our house I still did not have the least suspicion. I parked my car, went into the house but there was nobody of my familly. And the curtains of all windows and the garden terrace door were all closed. What crazy shit was that? I called loudly my wife and our sons, but nobody answered. When I pushed the curtain of the veranda door to the garden open and stepped out, I almost died from heart attack. 

Where normally our smaller son played on the green, now there was a big open tent like construction full with plastic tables and chairs, a hell of party decoration and about 60 friends and colleagues and their famillies. And in front of all these surprise party guests my wife, our sons and Claus Welker were standing for receiving me there upon my complete surprise. Oh man, what a crazy fool I had been !!!!!

We had a wonderful birthday party through the rest of the day and the whole night. Mexicans know how to make parties. In the afternoon the obligatory Mariachi band came marching in and they stayed until the last drop of my nice tequila collection had been drunk. Normally You hire the Mariachis for one, two or three hours, but if the party is good and Your guests are animated, they will pay the Mariachis for prolongation hours and the Mariachis, if they do not have another appointment for playing at somebody elses house, stay as long as You can pay them and Your tequila lasts. 

For all my party guests from our wonderful birthday party on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at our house in Villas, Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, I choose this wonderful Mexican song “Cómo te voy a olvidar ” played by the famous Mexican cumbia music group Los Àngeles Azules. 

Thanks for Your highly appreciated interested (?) company during my (first) birthday post in this blog today. Take care ! I`ll have a tequila (or two ) tonight !

 

When I took over responsability as President of Vulkan do Brasil on September 17, 2014, I spent the first days mainly with the managers there in order to become acquainted with them and to learn about them and their roles and experiences. And for sure – I spent also lots of hours on the shopfloor areas of our factory trying to get a first impression of our operational performance. 

Actually at this time – and from then on for the next three months until the end of 2014 – as per agreement with my employer GEA Heat Exchangers (today: Kelvion), for whom I still continued – only half-day from then on – as Managing Director of their Brazilian company and factory in Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo, I just was employed on half-day basis as Interim Manager by Vulkan. This was the elegant agreement, which I could negociate with my both employers and to which both excellent companies agreed. Thus I could help GEA Heat Exchangers to win time for hiring my successor for their Brazilian company and I could get started immediately, to help Vulkan get things under control at their factory in Itatiba.

After the first week at Vulkan do Brasil`s factory I had already gained a quite complete picture of the situation of this company and I concluded that there should no time unnecessarily be wasted to initiate the urgently needed complete restructuring process. It was very clear for me, that we needed to rearrange completely the whole company and that we needed urgently to clean up and improve all operations and indirect operations support areas, means manufacturing, planning, purchasing, Quality Control and all others because of the really very critical state and situation of the factory at that time,

It became immediately clear for me, that we would not be able to do this alone and that I needed to bring in quickly highly qualified, experienced and trustful external support. A doctor was needed ! And I quickly got an idea. 

Because of my longtime activities and active participation in events of the German-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AHK) Sao Paulo (https://www.ahkbrasilien.com.br/), I already had an extensive network of excellent contacts and experienced friends familiar with  all types of professional subjects and know how. That`s clearly the advantage of continuously doing networking and partnering. But it is important for me to say, that this only works, if You contribute freely and share Your own experiences openly and actively with the others. 

“One way streets” don`t work in this sence. You need at first to offer support and help to others, so that You can ask them for support and receive help from them later-on, when You need it by Yourself. Egoists who just want to gain cheap access to other people`s fund of experiences and know how, are quite quickly beeing identified as unwanted and excluded from such fair and open information sharing and colaboration networks. Hard lessons sometimes for certain kinds of people…

I decided, to call Dr. Hans-Jürgen Klose, whom I knew from his KPMG times in Sao Paulo and who had just shortly before joined Staufen-Taktica (https://www.staufen-taktica.com.br/pt/), the Brazilian Staufen subsidiary, as lean management expert and consultant. And I was already aware, that Staufen was one of the German, globally acting, technical consultancy firms with the highest prestige and experience. 

Hans and I met on a sunny saturday afternoon on the deck terrace of one of the beer bars in the “Beco Fino” bar & restaurants area in Jundiaí, where I was still living at that time. I explained Hans the background of my new job at Vulkan do Brasil and I described my interpretation of the critical situation of our factory to him. For me it was evident, that we urgently needed to apply lean systematics and to start immediately the reconstruction of our whole factory. 

The discussion with Hans, who from that time on became one of my closest friends, made us draft jointly on some pieces of paper, which the bar servant brought us to our table, a pilot project for our Lokring production area, which had just shortly before been transferred from our former factory in Barueri, Sao Paulo, to Itatiba, Sao Paulo, but which was not at all integrated and optimised yet. On the monday after our meeting in Jundiai Hans sent me his detailed offer and proposal and we immediately came over contractually and started the active realisation of our first lean project at Vulkan do Brasil. This was at the end of september 2014, less than two weeks after I had arrived at Itatiba. 

It is not an exageration if I tell You, that this became one of the most exciting and successful projects which my team colleagues and I worked upon during the following weeks and months in close cooperation with Hans and his wonderful and highly experienced Staufen-Taktica team members. This project created an enormous dynamic and involved more and more of our employees in all departments and on all leadership levels.

During future posts I will give You detailed insights, about what and how we did and also about what we achieved altogether. What I can tell You already is, that we turned each stone of our factory, not a single machine continued where it had been installed before and all our work routines and processes were critically reflected and improved. The lean transformation of our whole company took us an uninterrupted period of almost two years and delivered wonderful results. But I will tell You about all this in my future posts.

 

Hans left Staufen-Taktica later-on, moved to Germany together with his lovelly familly, opened his own consultancy firm (https://www.innoand.de/de/start/) and attends his customers there but he also continues with several international projects. We did not loose our contact nor our great friendship over these years and whenever I need experienced qualified hints about certain technical subjects, I call Hans and we discuss these. This reflects also a lot of my intensive experience with regards to the involvement of consultants and the colaboration with them. It does not make any sence for You, to look for a “Messias”, who answers all Your questions and solves all Your problems. People who sell such “consultancy” just cost You money and don`t really help You further. Really good consultants – besides the large experience and great know how, which they undoubtedly need to have – work actively together with You and make You reach Your targets with their help, but by Yourself. 

Thank You very much for Your today`s attention during reading this post. Wish You a highly successful day and hope to see You again here in my blog tomorrow.