Personal & Professional Experiences & Insights

Category: Uncategorized

  • Globalisation & global supply chains – new challenges vs new solutions

    Hello again everybody. It makes fun, to see You all back here in my blog again. Lots of very motivating and interesting comments and questions have been coming from all over the world to my posts and I would like to share one of these with You first. Many of You have expressed their admiration for the easily detectable open culture and strong team spirit, which we have managed to establish within our company and one of You asked me, to comment more specifically, how I personally see the importance of diversity for modern teams and leadership and how we at Vulkan do Brasil deal with it in practice. I will answer this very nice and important question on ocasion of one of my future posts, because I have already chosen to give You some insights today on how I see and deal with the important topics globalisation and global supply chains. 

    We are right now in a time and under circumstances, where it seems to be fashion to declare the end of the globalisation, as we got to know it during the last decades. Well, to a certain extend it is a fact, that governments and politicians in many countries are retreating from their former more globally oriented politics and intentions and are much more focussing on their home affairs and themselfes. As far as this has to do with the need to fix home made problems and focus the efforts, resources and dedication on this, I would not necessarily call it wrong. At least we can understand it. But if it comes to the aggressive denial of global cooperation, bridge building and refusal of contribution to solving global problems like the protection of the environment, the combat of deseases, wars and hunger, things clearly change for me and turn unwanted and counter productive from a general humanity standpoint. 
    But unfortunately, this is what more and more is happening now and we must altogether cross our fingers, that it does not continue forever. Finally all humans live in the same one world and must arrange each other with all others including the sharing of this planet`s wealth, resources and space. As an engineer and with some experience in modern technologies, I can easily imagine, that mankind during the next decades will find the right technical and economical solutions for all challenges, which we altogether face right now. This refers to all kinds of modern technologies, which will enable us to generate clean energies, solve the dramatic global water supply and waste management questions, increase the production and distribution of healthy food for the growing world population, find smart solutions for the future traffic of the people in the mega cities, develop sustainable processes for the efficient and environment friendly utilisation of mineral resources and many other technological challenges more.
    As far as these questions depend on technical solutions, I am totally relaxed and convinced, that mankind will find and develop these. But the really big challenge for us is, how to find peace, mutual acceptation and a certain happiness or at least equilibrium between all humans, peoples, religions, cultures and countries on all continents of this wonderful planet? I don`t believe, that mankind will eradicate itself. I have never believed in the theories and fears of the apologists, which You can find every now and then with their conspirative theories of “the end of the world”. But I have my doubts with respect to our conditions, to reach such a paradise like state of equilibrium between all humans everywhere on this globe. Our experience since the foundation of the first tribes and cultures has shown us so far, that humans really seem to be “the worst animals” on earth and always create trouble amongst themselfes and with the others. This is something where I cannot imagine, that modern technologies finally can help. This goes deep into our brains and souls and DNAs. Maybe some of You have gained experience with these questions and would like to comment on it. 
    Now – with the actually given situation, business and industry in general and in all countries are finding themselfes confronted with new, not really expected and/or anticipated challenges. Many companies attend the global markets with their products beeing manufactured in certain countries but need to distribute them from there to all other market regions. This has become quite complicated for many companies due to the actual limitations with respect to the availability of raw materials, workers, transportation and distribution means and also – not only in the case of B2C business – with the sale of their products. Some companies find themselfes in terrible situations, where their factories are missing urgently needed raw materials or components. Others anyhow can`t continue to manufacture, because the sale of their products due to lock downs and because of reduced customer demand has stopped and their warehouses are full with non-moving goods.
    In our particular case, all this is thank God not an issue. For the manufacture of our couplings, brakes and backstops for all types of industrial applications, like in mining, iron & steel, sugar & alcohol, pulp & paper, oil & gas, bulk solids handling, transportation and ship loading, for all kinds of cranes, hoists and material elevators, pumps, compressors, ventilators, turbines, mills, seperators, mixers, cooling towers etc. we almost exclusively use raw materials and components, which we buy on the local brazilian market and we have not found any dificulties so far with our supply chain for these. Only a few materials, actually mainly special components, are beeing bought from suppliers in the US, Europe and Asia. But we normally have a certain minimum “safety” stock of these in our warehouse at our factory in Itatiba and even with these imported materials we have not really found bigger problems so far. For sure this makes an important part of our high attractivity for our customers, because they know they can blindly rely on us and we will never let them down. This is extremely important for our main customers, because they cannot loose running time for their operations and must under all circumstances keep their processes and operations going. 
    One more reason for our relative independence of global supplies is, that because of our huge portfolio of all kinds of couplings, brakes and backstops, we can in many cases offer our customers many times alternative solutions. This is often important, because this gives them opportunities to speed up deliveries and solutions of emergency situations in their installations. We are not a company, which sells only products from the catalogue and from the shelf in a warehouse. Our speciality is, to develop or modify products exactly as they are needed by our customers and according to their specifications. We love to provide customized products and solutions but we do not just develop and supply these. We accompany the instalation, comissioning and start-up of these together with our costumers wherever their facilities are. Our specilized and highly versatile service engineers and technicians travel around the globe whenever and whereever necessary – for sure now with the unfortunately given temporary travel and entry limitations for certain countries. 
    Coming back to what I have mentioned before. My own strong conviction is, that politicians, politics, fashions and philosophies will continue to change ongoingly and that it is just a question of time, until the right now interrupted globalisation processes will be re-taken by humanity. No way out – single countries and societies cannot resist for much long to the pressure, to take actively part in the joint solution finding for the really big problems, which exist for all humans and may not be postponed for long. Time is running! 
    But – and this is also very sure – we altogether have learned a lot during the Covid-19 crisis, which by the way is all bot not over yet, and I am absolutely convinced, that the whole world incl. politics, economy, industry and business will not return to where Covid-19 has interrupted us a few months ago, but will adapt ourselfes to many new ways how to live, do business,  manufacture and distribute products. 
    And I can also not see any contradiction between globalized economy and business and regionally distributed manufacturing and supply chain structures. For us as technology suppliers this does not make the least difference. We follow anyhow our customers and their requirements and needs globally. In the end what finally decides about the success of our business is only their decision, to buy products from us, and not our intention to sell our products to them. 
    I am very sure, that several of my readers will jump on these thoughts and tell us their own experiences and ideas about these so highly important topics. This makes me pretty curious and I will definitely share all comments coming in upon these topics with You for further discussion in future posts.
    This is the end – not of my blog, but of my today`s post. We all need to start to work now and focus on our to do`s for today and for the freshly started new week. Have fun! Wish You success! See You again here tomorrow.

  • Go new rebels go ! The hour of nonconformity has come !

    Good morning everybody. Hope You have already enjoyed Your breakfast and are prepared for the tough ride, to which I will invite You now. Maybe the title of my today`s blog gave You already an early warning. Anyhow I`ll explain this now to You. 

    Since my early childhood – having lost my father at the age of six years, actually he died in hospital from a longer desease on December 24th, 1964 – I have been developping as an analytical, critical and often non conformist person and this had with a certain propability to a great extend to do with the circumstances of how, when and where I grew up. And young people anyhow, no matter the individual circumstances of their life, must master the challenge during their natural maturation process, to find the right way and means, to dosage their nonconformity behaviour and adapt it to the way of live they intend to start and develop. In my case the circumstances were ideal for nonconformity. It was the time of the “cold war”, the US military and politics desaster in Vietnam, the time of the hippy movement, the time of massive left-wing students movements and protests in Berlin, Paris and other cities around the western world against the post world war II establishment and society, the time of the Woodstock concert and the “underground” music, movies like “Easy Rider” and a real hell of  modern, border crossing literature. 
    Actually I had grown up in a very small village in the middle of nowhere in the forests close to the german city of Kaiserslautern, which the US soldiers stationed around there and in the huge US air base Ramstein used to call just “K Town” because of their dificulties to spell it`s name. When I was 12, my mother decided, to move together with me, my sister and my brother to the “big” city Mannheim just on the other side of the river Rhine.  What a ridiculous perception, seen from my today`s perspective and after all my in the meantime gained experiences with living and moving in really big cities. But anyhow to live in this “big” city and it`s – compared to the boring countryside, where I had grown up until then – exciting life, gave me completely new impulses and inspirations and at school – amongst other good and bad experiences, which I made there – I got to know good friends, with whom I still continue in contact, no matter the long time that has passed since then and also despite the great distances seperating us. 
    After finishing school in Mannheim, I did my military service (wonderful stuff for a future post) in the army, studied Chemical Engineering at the at that time still called Technical Highschool of Karlsruhe (today = KIT, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) and went out into the world of work, engineering, technology, management, business etc. This was the starting point for my trajectory of job experiences and professional career which finally led me through different places in Germany, Spain, Mexico and Brazil , several companies and two marriages with in total five children (one of them actually is the son of my lovely wife from her own first marriage) to Vulkan do Brasil in Itatiba in the very beautiful interior of the brazilian state of Sao Paulo, where I am living and working and blogging right now. 
    I have always maintained and fiercely defended my analytical, critical and somehow provocative attitude and spirit, but for sure, since I have started to work as an employee for industrial companies, I have always tried to do this in a loyal, compatible way with the companies, for which I have been working and always respecting  the general business rules and cultures, in order to avoid unwanted and non-productive conflicts and failure. But my personal conviction and experience after about 35 years of experience as engineer, manager and executive shows me clearly, that nor business environments nor company cultures in general require, that You as an employee hide or even disguise Yourself and play false games and roles. 
    In the contrary – in some companies more and in others (still) less –  it is anyhow expected and necessary, that the employees express actively and openly their thoughts and opinions and participate and contribute with own initiative and self esteem to their job and the success of their company`s business in general. If there were really limitating cages with regards to this, I would assume immediately, that the vast majority of these had been self invented resp. self constructed by the individual employees and not so much erected by the companies, for which they are working. 
    This is even more valid, the higher Your position in Your company is. I always tell my superiors, that they also pay me for the things which I again and again tell them, but which they – at least sometimes and initially – don`t like to hear from me. Modern business is all but military. The higher Your salary, the higher Your responsability to think and act, including to open Your mouth, no matter whether this leads You through heaven or hell from time to time. Society, community, business world, industry and companies need more than ever modern rebels, people who open their mouth,  promote progress and success and help actively to avoid going totally wrong ways  and causing damages. 
    Today`s world is so crazy. Just look at international politics and certain important politicians. In many countries this has led to the schizophrenic situation, that during certain periods – but this is definitely not sustainable for longer periods – the economy, the companies and the business world ignore completely the politics and the politicians and their politics and go their own independent ways. We made experience with this in Brazil during some time period and I could see it happen in Peru as well in the recent past. This makes me conclude, that – again – on all levels of society, in politics, economy, business and companies new rebels are so much required to appear, because too many situations, solutions and even rules and laws need to be further developped, if not changed or substituted. Go new rebels, go !
    A good example for such a constructive, modern, new rebel for me is definitely Philipp Schiemer. During his last week finished period as President of Mercedes-Benz do Brasil – Philipp has been called back to Germany by Mercedes-Benz for taking over his new responsability as CEO of Mercedes-AMG –  and also in his role as President of the German-Brazilian Chamber of Industry and Commerce (AHK) in Sao Paulo during the last two years, where I have the enormous pleasure and honor to make part of the board of directors, Philipp in both functions always expressed publicly, openly and frankly, what he saw, thought and understood as defects and improvement needs in this as beautiful as suffering country, no matter whether the politicians and other “important people” liked this, or not. Philipp, in this sence, has acted totally different than the great majority of  the influential business and industry leaders in this country, which traditionally avoid to share openly their real thoughts and to take directly and with public visibility part in the political and economical discussions and decisions in this country. What a shame. Hope, that after Philipp`s return to Germany,  many other new critical voices and new rebels will appear. 
    Here in Brazil we – as honest, sincere, hard working, law respecting, tax paying – citizens really can`t stand any longer, to hear and see the same stupid bullshit (sorry for the knowingly strong word) coming from the well established, over all and everything dominating egoistic, incompetent and corrupt political class, no matter, whether they label themselfes as “right” or “left” in the political spectrum. The actual Covid-19 desaster without any clear counter measures and policy having been established country wide, like almost all other countries worldwide did, just shows this brazilian political and organisational nightmare once more clearly. 
    At our company Vulkan do Brasil we have implemented a full program of  effective protection measures for our employees since the beginning of the appearance and spread Covid-19 in Brazil in the middle of March. Almost all administrative employees are doing home office and in our factory we have spread our employees over two shifts, created seperated, autonomous  work groups, have imposed the obligation to wear protection mascs and several other helpful measures. Thus we do, what is in our hands, to help to combat the further spread of this terrible desease and to reduce the risk for all of us.  
    No song is fitting better to this rebellious post than Billy Idol`s famous “Rebel Yell”:
    I hope, that You have been inspired by my today`s reflections and open sharing of thoughts and opinion. By the way – which have been Your own experiences so far with the above mentioned subjects? Any other new rebels around here amongst us? 
    Looking forward to meeting again with You tomorrow morning. 

  • What a pride ! 5th birthday anniversary of our brazilian DPPA

    Good to see You here again this morning! Thanks for so faithfully following my posts. For today I have chosen a subject, which really excites me and makes me very proud and happy. When I got freshly started as President of Vulkan do Brasil in Itatiba in September 2014, one of my first activities was, to get familiar with our product portfolio and to understand details about our products and their typical applications. Our engineers gave me theoretical training lessons und my colleagues in our factory showed me how we manufacture our different products. This gave me already a quite good background, but was still very theoretical. The real understanding, for which applications our products finally serve, came during several visits to customers in the different industries, which we typically attend.  You cannot imagine, how impressive it was for somebody as curious and generally interested in technology as me, to see with his own eyes a big open pit iron ore mine, an entire steel factory or a sugar mill. Until then I had made plenty of experience during my different career steps with many other industries, like automotive, consumer goods, pharmaceutical, chemical plants, oil refineries etc. But to see the huge and powerful mining machinery was definitely a new dimension of experience. 

    Due to the experience which I have made during my so far 35 years long professional career in so many different industries, I have meanwhile become fairly skilled in confronting myself quite easily with new products, technologies, processes, customers, businesses and industries and in finding fast ways for learning and understanding the basics of these. Otherwise I would not have been able, to execute my general management functions at all these companies and industries successfully. 
    In the case of Vulkan do Brasil, my early contact with our industrial products and their applications at our customers gave me the strong feeling, that we needed to “polish our shoes”, to introduce some modern technologies and to create additional new funtionalities. It was evident, that we needed to update several of our products, which already had come into their years, in order to extend their application opportunities and – for sure – also with the objective to easen and standardize manufacturing, shorten our lead times and reduce our manufacturing costs. I was pretty aware, that because of the at that time notably and very fast arriving new deep economical & political crisis in our as beautiful as suffering country, we needed to reinforce the walls of our castle in Itatiba. But not without at the same time going out into the stormy sea of troubled economic waters and generate massive exportation of our products to new customers allover the whole Latin American region, where – with the only exception of Chile, where our faithful distributor Andres Puglisevich and his company SCEM Ltda were already successfully representing our company and distributing our industrial products – we until then practically had not been offering yet and much less selling our products and services. 
    But it was clear for me that, in order to master all the obvious obstacles on this stony way, means fierce competition, long distances and complicated logistics, we needed to improve our pre-conditions for becoming able to get really started in doing this and becoming successful. This made me decide, to create a development department for products, processes and applications – our new baby DPPA was born. In January 2015 Josias Leal, so far Operations & Engineering Manager of Vulkan do Brasil, was oficially appointed as Development Director and within approximately six months Josias, with myself as the stake holder and fully supported by all other management teams members of our company, set up his initial team of development engineers, recruited several new employees, created our standardized development process for new products and all necessary internal work structures and processes. 
    That`s how we got started and learned to fly. During the first year our development department DPPA was mainly occupied with its own organisational set up, the critical analisis – very much based on customer experience – of our whole product portfolio of in total approximately 2000 different products, variants and sizes of products – all kinds of couplings, brakes and backstops for all industrial applications You can imagine. To be true this was a very important but not so much exciting period. Josias and his team needed to focus on this extremely important work, but could not really get started yet on the development of really new products during this first year. 
    This situation changed completely during the following years since wet set up during early 2016 our first development project plan and started in parallel with the development of the first few of totally new products. And during 2017-2019 several fantastic new couplings and brakes, after intensive testing in our in-house test center – which actually has been created by Josias and his DPPA team during the same time –  became ready for getting oficially presented to our customers and launched on the different markets.  To finally present a new product to the public and start the sale of it, is the highest excitement and satisfaction You can imagine for development engineers and there is nothing more appropriate and just, than to celebrate this together with all contributers on ocasion of a wonderful brazilian barbeque with ice cold beers and caipirinha. As mentioned already in my first post “Personal & Professional Experiences & Insights”, which has also become the name of my blog, I am deeply convinced of the importance of the appeal “after action – satisfaction”. 
    As You can see, in the year of it`s 5th anniversary, our DPPA (“Desenvolvimento de Produtos, Processos e Aplicações” resp. “Development of Products, Processes and Applications”) has developped from a small baby to a youngster, collected lots of information and experience and is following adjusted internal target strategies highly successful, but with the same passion, dedication and excitement, as during the first weeks when we started with it for the first time about 5 years ago.
    I selected a picture for this post which shows our actual DPPA team – since two years very nicely led by our colleague Marcel Morais, Development Manager – after our oficial internal 5th anniversary event at Vulkan do Brasil`s factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, and shortly before our wonderful “after action – satisfaction” party. 
    During future posts I will give some more insights into our experience and success with the development of new products and technologies and I will also present to You in one of my future posts  our “Brain” group, which is something very special and was also proudly invented by Josias, Marcel and myself as a spin-off from our DPPA two years ago. You will love it. 
    See You – hopefully – again here tomorrow after the publication of my 2nd sunday post since the start of this blog exactly ten days ago. 

  • The winds of Keltia

    Dear faithful readers and followers of my blog posts, looks like we could altogether meanwhile solve the initial technical problems and You can easily follow and subscribe my blog posts now by just typing klausfhepp.blogspot.com into the browser of Your smart device (fone, pad and/or computer) and entering Your email address in the menu window which You can open on the left upper side of my posts. Good news first for You! Our community is growing continuously and globally. We are many already and – and this is really overwhelming me – we are already present on all continents of this planet. Please permit me this romantic comment, but this is really “killing” me. I knew already, that I have friends, business partners and all other types of good contacts at many places, but I was deeply impressed, when Google Analytics showed me on the map of the globe, wherever You live. Wonderful. Today I selected a story and subject, which is fully personal and has nothing – directly – to do with my job career and professional experiences, but which for sure has had an important contribution to preparing me for my later-on professional development and international activities. 

    Now I`ll invite You to a jump suit dive from the cloud right into the center of Paris. But at first let`s set our clocks back to saturday, march 17, 2018 and have a look at the picture I selected for this post. My 30 years old german son Florian and I had just arrived at the entrace to the famous music hall “Olympia” for attending the fabulous live show of the breton harp player Alan Stivell, an – outside the fierce community of his faithful fans – little known real dinosaur musician. Actually Alan Stivell modernized and revived the traditional celtic music and can be considered as the precursor of the later-on so called “Celtic Rock”. He further developped the harp instruments, played with bronze strings and invented the electric harp. His first live LP (this was an eternity before at first music cassettes and much later-on cds became popular, not talking about MP3 or even today`s music streaming) was launched in 1972 by Fontana Recordings and titled “Á lÒlympia”. 
    This was exactly the year during which I had participated in a students summer camp in the very beautiful Cevennes mountains in the incredibly beautiful south of France. Besides many other very nice memories of these student camp vacations, I kept forever two important, exciting and extremely impressive remembrances. One of the many friends I made during this time, was a german girl, a little bit older than me and at the same time extremely beautiful, sweet, intelligent, culturally interested and in general very active. And she was one of the few admirers of Alan Stivell`s mordernized celtic harp music, which at that time hardly any people knew, much less in Germany. So we heard together endlessly Alan Stivell`s until then only published two albums “Á lÒlympia” and “Reflets”. They got burned deeply into my soul and made me listen to Alan Stivel`s music throughout all the years that have passed since then. To be true, not really that often, but sometimes. And it makes me feel happy and inspired still today, after such a real eternity. One of my favorite Alan Stivell music pieces is “The Winds of Keltia”, one of his few songs in english language:
    Please let me know, how this song affects You. Having explained all this, the only explanation owing You still is, how it came to my son`s and my trip to Paris. One lazy sunday afternoon in january 2018, lying – like usually – in the hammock on the terrace of our house, surfing in the internet, I found a note, mentioning, that Alan Stivell (I seriously didn`t even know, that he was still alive then) was giving a live concert in the “Olympia” music hall in Paris, exactly where unbelievable 46 years earlier his first live album had been recorded. This fell like a bomb on my head. No doubt – I must be there and see and here this musician, which has been so important for my youth and even later-on, finally. Quick thought, quick decision and quick realization have always been amongst my talents. I called my son Florian, of whom I knew that he also has a strong affection for music and cultural themes in general and invited him, to accompany me on a spontaneous weekend trip to Paris – in my case by plane from Sao Paulo and in Florian`s case by train from Münster/Germany – with  Alan Stivell`s concert as the foreseen weekend highlight. 
    I can confirm to You, that we enjoyed terribly this weekend in always exciting Paris and that I was overwhelmed by Alan Stivell`s live show and music. He played his harp and sang his songs with the same dedication, passion and perfect style as more than four decades ago. Such people – the same as Mick Jagger – always fascinated me. No loss of power and authenticity until the final count down. That`s what I always dreamed of and always admired since I was a child. Never loose Your personality and fundamental abilities to express Yourself and participate actively in what`s happening. This closed another loop of experiences for me in my life. I hope, that I did not bore You with this extremely personal and emotional story and that You have somehow enjoyed this sharing of pure and deeply personal  experiences, values  and feelings and that this makes You curious for following my future posts on all kinds of personal, cultural and professional experiences and insights, which might enrich You with positive inspirations. Tomorrow I`ll come back to You with the reporting of a really important, business related subject. 
    Ken arc`hoazh- See You tomorrow (in breton language)

  • First experiences with doing business development in Africa

    Hello again, my faithful followers, readers, friends, business partners and all others. I must admit that our 1st week`s party for this blog has been fantastic last night and I am still recovering my strengths from it. But don`t worry, my NAI maschine functionning (explained in my post no 6 “Hot stuff” from june 23) was not effected negatively and we can thus proceed now with the full normal speed and quality (?) of my today`s post. 

    Today I wanted to show You in a very quick and fast ride, how I made my initial experience in doing business in Africa and how I`m feeling about this. In one of my earlier posts I already explained to You, that 5 years ago my colleague Arno Ett (Sales Director VDT Latam @ Vulkan do Brasil) and I had started to follow the historical example of the brazilian bandeirantes (a mixture of explorers and adventurers, which discovered the deep interior of the state of Sao Paulo about two centuries ago from out of the at that time few cities close to the beaches) and spread our sales activities out of our factory and company Vulkan do Brasil in beautiful Itatiba in the interior of the state of Sao Paulo to the huge and distant latin american region and countries, means Mexico, Central America, Caribbean and (mainly) the south american, especially in the andes region, countries. I will come back to this exciting and highly successful project later-on in future posts. 
    But what happened is, that our Vulkan Group HQ in Herne, Germany, due to the impressive success of this project, exactly a year and a half ago invited me, to help our industrial division during it`s massive global expansion project, to give a special focus on our introduction into the mining (and other industrial) markets in Australia and allover Africa. Therefore we immediately founded our “Vulkan Southern Hemisphere” (Australia, Brazil and Africa) initiative and started lots of activities. About the business development which we initiated in Australia, I will report to You in future posts seperately, because Australia, besides beeing a huge continent, has it`s own particularities with regards to people, culture, business and industry. 
    In the case of Africa, my activities, together with – over the time – my wonderful brazilian team colleagues Elisangela Santos (Marketing & Sales Director Vulkan Couplings division) Marco, Santos (HR & Special Projects Director), Josias Leal (Development & Engineering Director, “Mr. Brake”), Tiago Bedani (Sales Director Vulkan Drive Tech Brazil division) and several of their employees, all excelent specialists with tremendous experience in industrial engineering and sales, started at the beginning of december 2018 with my arrival, together with two very close brazilian collaborators at Johannesburg and Cape Town. In fact, at the beginning of our “african adventures” we presented ourselfes to Robert and Michael Lowin (Managing Director resp. General Manager) of our South African sister company Vulkan South Africa, who manage beside the sales activities in South Africa also our fantastic engineering, distribution and service center in Edenvale, Johannesburg. 
    That`s how we got started. We spent almost the first 6 months on analisis and the joint definition and realisation of several development and improvement projects in Southern Africa. During the intire last year, we started to get familiar with many other african countries and market regions, we participated several important public industrial events (future posts will follow) and made countless valuable contacts, gained numerous new friends, partners and customers allover the different countries, which  we visited, amongst others Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Botswana, Sambia, DR Congo, Ghana and Guinea. Maybe You think, that were only a few of the in total 54 countries allover the beautiful african continent. But believe me, if You count with 1-2 weeks visit time for each of our travels to these countries, in some cases we even did repeated visits, and compare this to the 52 weeks of last year, You might get an idea, of what I am talking about. And You may not ignore the fact, that all my highly esteemed colleagues and comrades – the same like I – did all this additionally to our normal, main responsabilities and duties in Brazil and Latin America, where our “home business” continued under our full responsability. 
    But we really enjoyed it and made a real hell of all kinds of new experiences (good raw material for me for several future posts). And we clearly, together with our South African “blood brothers”, overachieved all originally set goals. I will come back to more details of all of this in posts during the next months. I promise You, You will be very impressed and might even learn a lot from our experiences. But today I am a little later than normally – due to last nights “1st week party” of my blog and daily posts – and I need to finish this soon. But under no circumstances I will leave You without recommending to You a truthfully spoken very very interesting and eye opening book about the history of the african continent since it`s independence. This book is called “The state of Africa”, was written by the author Martin Meredith and became published by Simon & Schuster for the first time in 2005. I bought it during one of my countless stop overs during last year at Johannesburg`s “OR Tambo International Airport” and “ate” it from the lecture of the first page on until I finished. If You want to understand the cultural background and the history of today`s african countries, this is a “must” for You (but just to make this clear for everybody: Simon & Schuster – at least so far – doesn`t pay me comission for my “propaganda” for this book). 
    To understand something about Africa without listening to it`s wonderful music, is absolutely impossible. Therefore here my today`s music recommendation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIGU11nopN0

    This is the song “Hona” from the late Malian singer and multi-instrumentalist Ali Farka Touré (1936 – 2006), whose speciality were blends of traditional Malian music and it`s derivates. And for sure, my today`s picture for this post cannot be but about Africa, a huge continent and it`s incredibly amicable and hearty  population, which I still hardly know, but already passionately love. If You think, damned Covid-19 had stopped us from continuing our business development projects in Africa during the last months, You have totally failed. But I will explain this during future posts, as we have come now to the end of my today`s post. See You – hopefully ! – here again tomorrow. Enjoy the just started (Sao Paulo) brandnew beautiful day and have lots of fun and success. 

  • Is it really true that Germans have an aggressive business style?

    Welcome back here in my blog. 

    For my today`s post I have foreseen to give You some insights, how I made experience with different management and communication styles at the different places, where I have been living and working so far and with a special focus on how we Germans often  see ourselfes and how other people in the different countries, where I made professional and personal experience, often see us. 
    And I will also mention a very funny experience related to these cultural factors, which I made when I just had freshly arrived at Toluca, Mexico, for getting started on my new job challenge as Managing Director of ElringKlinger Mexico`s gasket and other car components factory there on june 1st, 2003. I had moved there directly from La Coruna, Spain, where I had been responsible for Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s “La Toja” cosmetics plant during 3.5 years until I decided, to terminate my employeeship after 16 extremely interesting and successful years with Henkel. 
    At that time I was freshly divorced and had the strong feeling and desire, that this was the right moment for me, to brake out of my usual habits and environment and look for new horizons, experiences and further career growth. 
    Henkel at that time was very advanced in all cultural and strategical business dimensions and put a clear focus on everything, that was directly product and customer and – for sure – profit related. For me as an engineer thus there were not too many opportunities to get ahead and become promoted to positions with more responsability than for a production plant. 
    Besides this I thought, that 16 years as employee within one and the same company were much too long already for me and that it therefore did not make sence for me,to prolong this further. Therefore I followed the invitation from ElringKlinger, to become their new Managing Director in Mexico and quit at Henkel. 
    At our company, in Toluca I received during one of my first weeks on the new job 3 colleagues from our HQ in Germany, which were also involved in our North American business. 
    The intention behind it was, to know each other personally and for discussion of our joint new plans for the business development in this region. 
    My 3 visitors were – the same as me – all from the southern part of Germany, where many people typically are much more extroverted and talk a little more, faster and louder, than in other regions of my country and where people also have a certain natural habit, to gesticulate more when talking. 
    Now image the 4 of us in my glaswall office with the door wide open to the open plan administration office outside, where many of my new mexican employees had their descs. After lunch one of my managers took me to the side and asked me with a pretty concerned look “Why did You fight amongst each other? What`s going wrong? Are You fine? How can we help You against these others?”. 
    I stood there with my mouth wide open and did not know, what to answer. I was in the sence of the word speechless. Fight? Amongst us? Things going wrong? Need for help? What was that about? What did my employees see and interprete ? 
    In my eyes and the ones of my german colleagues, we just had had a very active, energy loaden, dynamic discussion and come to great ideas and conclusions. Means clearly, nothing had been wrong at all! There had been no “fighting” amongst us! 
    Because of the importance of this little anecdote from the start of my job at Toluca, I decided to show You a picture of me together with my management team at ElringKlinger Mexico 2004.  
    Greetings and a warm embrace to all my former team colleagues and friends. Hope You are all fine, happy and successful.

    During the next days, weeks and months I recalled this scene and experience again and again and I also discussed it with my mexican employees and – for sure – with my german colleagues at our HQ. 

    This was an extremely important lesson learned for me as freshly arrived newcomer in Mexico. You cannot judge other people, other cultures, other habits without having gained deep detailed knowledge and profound understanding of these. 
    Since this time, I took this experience actively as a fundamental requirement when coming to a totally new country with totally different culture compared to the ones, where I had already made experience with. When my colleague Arno Ett, Sales Director for our industrial division Vulkan Drive Tech in Latin America (Mexico, Central America, Caribbean and all South America, with the only exception of Brazil) and I got started on our business development plans for the expansion of our until then practically purely brazilian sales to the whole Latin America region 5 years ago, I decided, to always spent a weekend “without work” (to be true, this doesn`t exist for us, we`re all nuts and restless and love our jobs at Vulkan do Brasil) for getting a little familiar with the local people, their habits, culture, food, drinks, sports, politics, religion, history, economy etc. in such new countries, where we travelled for the first time. 
    For me it has also become a very important and necessary activity, to eat some typical food and try some local drinks at “normal” places (not tourist traps), to have at least a quick glance at the most important local newspapers, watch some local TV programs and the evening news, to listen to local radio stations and to find out, how the people there distract themselfes during their leisure time. 
    Without getting at least a good clue of all this, I would not be preparde suficiently to meet business people and start business talks there. And this is definitely a handycap for certan other people, who do not live within the region, and arrive from far away of where the business, which they would like to do, shall happen. 
    Some of them do not find the time and money (companies must fund this within the business trips! this makes an important part of the business missions there!) or do not have the personal interest and/or talent, to develop such real discovery activities. I see so often strangers (“gringos”) arriving from Europe or the USA, rushing directly from the airport to their hotels (international, 5 stars, full with other strangers) and the other morning from there to the business meetings at the customers. 
    Many people still think that they can just apply their normal european or US american business style and culture. Handshake (2 minutes), coffe (5 minutes), bathroom (3 minutes), meeting (opening, agenda, conclusions, to do list), quick lunch (if perfect in their eyes: already on the way to the airport) and departure for the airport. Great meetings! No results but frustration on both sides. 
    And many times these visitors from far away report wonderful meeting results, about the huge market oportunities they have just discovered and the soon incoming big customer orders. Forget it. Just bla bla bla. For the birds. 
    But for sure, we are not the (only) owners of wisdom and experience with these cultural things. If You make part of the globally active business and market developping community, after more or less long time You will automatically feel like a familly member. You will from then on always meet the same people at different places, events and customers and make quite easily  friends (with the ones You like and which like You) with many of them. 
    These “business friendships” develop over time and distances and extend Your contact and friendship network, which enables You, to increase the fun and productivity of Your job enormously. But this will definitely be explained in more details and examples in future posts. Coming back to the provocative title of this post. 
    Is it finally true now, that Germans have an aggressive business style? Some for sure, but that`s definitely the same for any other nationality and origin of people, which You might encounter at any place around the globe. 
    My personal experience as German in so many different countries and at so many different places during the last 30 years, is totally positive. I can hardly remember, that I had been treated badly, unfair, with prejudice etc. at any place and at any time during all my so tremendously rich in experience journey so far. 
    In the contrary – but this is true identically for us as Brazilians, who hardly find problems with people at other places around the globe for general, cultural etc. reasons. In the contrary – my strong own feeling is, that as a German, You very often start, whereever You go, with a quite high initial credit of acceptation, respect, trust and openness. 
    But it`s like with money. You need to look after it constantly in order not to loose it. And to loose it is so easy, believe me. 
    I have seen many people of many different nationalities fail terribly by not respecting the local people and their cultures, customs and religion etc. Nobody today in the whole wide world accepts, to be treated as 2nd class, underdevelopped, stupid, childish, unfriendly or even offended or set under pressure. 
    Thanks god I never stepped into such traps so far and made great friends forever wherever I travelled. That`s what enriches Your live and job incredibly and gives You enormous self esteem and power for following and realizing Your professional and personal objectives and dreams. 
    That`s the right moment for giving You one more literatur recommendation. This New York Times bestseller , first published 2012 by Randomhouse, explains at lot of interesting things: “The power of habit -Why we do what we do in live and business”, Author: Charles Duhigg. Hopefully some of You will read this and come back to my blog with comments for all of us, how they found it. 
    That`s enough for today, my dear friends, readers, followers and all others. 
    I wish You a great wonderful and powerful new day and lots of fun and success in all activities You`ve planned for today. 
    Don`t let me down tomorrow, please, and continue to support this project. Subscribe my posts in klausfhepp.blogspot.com (just write it into Your internet browser and this will bring You to my blog).  

  • Hot stuff – I`m part of an NAI Man Machine System

    Wow – so many of my followers, readers, fans, enemies etc. already lining up in front of my blog door hungry for beeing amongst the first readers of my today`s post. That`s enormously motivating me, to continue with this activity. 

    Please be clear about this. If You appreciate my posts and contents offered to You, nobody heppier and more proud than me in this whole so small, after and besides all, world. 
    Let me at first give You some feedback upon the incredible resonance to my blog. Although I have just started this new baby project (by the way “New Baby” was the name of the shortly after closed again baby (equipment!) store which my wonderful wife Selma and I took over at the beginning of 2010 in Recife in the northeast of Brazil, freshly arrived back (home?) again in Brazil from Mexico), the audience, the reception and the support by wonderful friends, business partners and other contacts from allover the world is really overwhelming me. 
    Thousand honest thanks for that to all of You. Let me comment quickly a few important general things to You. First of all in the meantime we have found out, that anybody can read and adhere to my blog and posts easily using any common smart internet access device like mobile fones (IOS and/or Android), ipad/pad, laptop/notebook/desctop computer.  You just need to type klausfhepp.blogspot.com in Your browser and here we go…. So come on, don`t let me stand alone in the rain, please. 
    Second remark. I think it`s very nice for You, to get aware, that You are not alone. Many fine people at so many different places around the globe are with You and me already, sharing this experience and blog. Here just a few places from where supporters are with us: Sao Paulo/Brazil, Campinas/Brazil, Rotterdam/Netherlands, Belo Horizonte/Brazil, Cologne/Germany, Curitiba/Brazil, The Hague/Netherlands, Rest of Sichuan/China, Stuttgart/Germany, Sousse Gouvernante/Tunisia, Tilburg/Netherlands, Sheffield/England, Leon/Mexico, Orlando/USA, Jakarta/Indonesia, Santiago/Chile, Mumbai/India, Pune/India, Chennai/India, Johannesburg/South Africa, Agra/Ghana, Conakry/Guinea, Harare/Zimbabwe, Lubumbashi/DR Congo, Frankfurt/Germany, Perth/Australia, Lima/Peru, Guayaquil/Ecuador, Madrid/Spain, Graz/Austria and many many more. 
    Does this make You feel as proud as me? Next important comments for You today. I will start right now to answer every once and while interesting questions from commentators on my earlier posts. One of You asked me, how I find the time, to write all these posts. Very nice question. Easy to answer for me. 
    It sincerely doesn`t take me considerable time, to elaborate my posts. Sorry for the questionable analogy, but writing posts here for me is just a comparable effort to going to the bathroom (number 1 !). When I switch on my notebook in the morning and put the fingers (I tell You now a secret: I never learned typing, means I do it with 1 finger only) on the keyboard, a Non-Artificial Man Machine System takes over like an auto-pilot in an airplane and the post content starts to flow like water (or other liquids) directly from out of my brain through my right arm, finger, keyboard and notebook into the internet until finally arriving at the post criation place in google`s blogger tool and continues hopefully from there through the cloud onto Your smart device and from there through Your eyes directly into Your brain. 
    That`s it. My brain is so inexhaustibly full with a huge mass of experiences, learnings, remembrance, etc, that I do not have the least concern with regards to one day getting scarce in raw material for writing new posts. And with more than 50.000 nice, all by myself  taken fotos in my iphoto library, all my music playlists in spotify (they are not paying me any comissions for marketing support, just to make this clear for everybody !), the 35.000 music titles in my itunes library and the vast literature and arts passion and experience collected since I was 5 years old, I hardly should be confronted one day with missing material for sexy posts rich in authentic content stories. 
    All Your doubts and fears cleared with this? So let`s continue jointly here for the next decades. We should revise this maybe in 10 years or so…. Excelent link to my today`s literature recommendation: “Our Final Invention – Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era”,  James Barrat, St Martins Press, New York. To be true a sometimes boring and even scary book. Not so easy to read for non- techies, means people like me, who do not know much about all these modern technologies in detail and – even worse, but true! – don`t want to know all these details. We`re just users. 
    The techies must really hate us for this reason! We`re blind fish for them. Ignorants. Nothing-knowers. Ok, but that`s how obviously we are and it is. Well. This book exposes the thoughts and visions of many people (experts?) related to the AI (Artificial Intelligence) scene, especially with regards to the big question, whether GAI = Greater Than Human Artificial Intelligence (1st development stage) and Super Artificial Intelligence (SAI) will one day surpass the humans in terms of intelligence and dominion of decisions, means in the end – if this all really came true one day – enslave all of us, the human worms. Interesting, difficult, sometimes boring and as already outspoken, even scary lecture. 
    Now – if You read this book, You will encounter all these oficial terms AI, AGI and ASI, but what about my self-invented NAI term? What`s finally the meaning and story behind this? Hey men and women – it`s so simple and easy to explain and understand. 
    If I assume, that my body (mainly my brain, but also my arm and 1 finger) connected to the  internet by means of a keyboard, a notebook and a wireless internet connection form something jointly, I definitely cannot call this “artificial”, just purely because of the fact that I`m human, flesh & blood and therefore I choose the  new (?) term Non-Artificial Man-Machine System. 
    Take Your time and think about it. I`m extremely curious now to receive Your qualified feedback comments upon this invention. This was the right book for me during my 3 weeks of total quarantine from any other familly member in a seperate part of our house, after having been tested positive with Covid-19 three days after my return to Sao Paulo from Paris on sunday, march 15, 5:25 am, with Latam flight LA 8101. No chance, to tell You my Paris story right now, but don`t worry. During the next 10 years I will – guaranteed –  explain this in one of my daily posts to You.  
    Very dry subject today? Need some emotional complements still for this post? No problem. Listen to my today`s music recommendation: Juan Gabriel – Asi Fue (En Vivo Desde el Instituto Nacional de Belas Artes in Mexico City (https://youtu.be/0O4CLgXvbjU) Better don`t listen to this and don`t watch it, if You are more cold-hearted and anti-romantic character. But all my friends allover Latin America – not speaking of Mexico ! – will melt away and start feeling tears coming out of their eyes. 
    Oh man, this is so strong. I`m NAI, not AI, to make it clear once again. Last not least, just to round this up. There is also a very famous “Asi Fue” video on Youtube, where the great spanish singer Isabel Pantoja sings this heart breaking (“kitschy”?) song together with the late unforgotten Juan Gabriel: https://youtu.be/gFjdOjCPPlE. 
    Wonderful, for who really likes such stuff. Last tale for You today: when the latin american superstar Juan Gabriel died and millions over millions of latin people from the Rio Grande at the border to god`s own country, down to the Cabo dos Hornos, a very small commune in the deepest south of Chile, Tierra del Fuego, were profoundly mourning, 
    I read one amusing (sorry, I know it`s not adequate) funeral comment of an unknown, simple mexican lady: “My dear god, why did You not call away my husband to heaven and instead of him leave Juanito a little longer on earth with us”. This is autentic latin culture and feeling. If You want to do successfully a sustainable business in this beautifull huge region, You need a lot of cultural understanding and respect. 
    In future posts I will come back to this exhaustively. See You tomorrow, my dear friends, readers and faithful followers. Enemies stay away, please. No time, to waste time with You. All others: please follow me and my daily blog posts. Just type klausfhepp.blogspot.com in the browser of Your smart fone, ipad/pad or computer. 

  • Thanks to our neighbor`s new neighbors I just almost suffered a heart attack

    Hi alltogether, here I am again, but I have just almost died from a heart attack. My lovely wife saved me in the last minute. How did this come? 

    Well, having woken up and taken a shower, I went down into our kitchen to prepare my (do You remember this from my post number 1? if no, please read it once more) beloved indian chai tea. 
    Standing in front of the kitchen window front, I let my eyes slide over our garden towards the house and garden of our neighbors and good friends Marcelo, Thais and their 4 years old lovely daughter Isadora, towards the horizon. 
    But everything was different than the last time, when I watched knowingly this scenary. Over our neighbors wall, where I normally could see beautiful trees and the mostly blue sky and birds, now there was a grey, ugly 4 meters high prison like wall, just missing the usual barbed wire and machine gun towers on top of such installations. 
    Oh shit – my initial thought was, that this could only signify, that Mr T….. or – even worse for us here – Mr B. …. (I am fully aware, that this writing costs me 5 or 6 followers now, but I can live with that) – and their clans have occupied overnight the so far unused property, where the beautiful trees were standing, with the birds flying around them, below the blue sky, erected that ugly and stupid high wall and are constructing now their new palace residence there. 
    Can You imagine, how this hurt and struck me? If no, just have a look at the picture, which I took just now. OK – the ugly wall continues ugly the same, but my wife at least confirmed to me, that it`s not Mr T….. or Mr B…… and their clans, but just new neighbors, which are in the widespread brazilian egoistic and ignorant behaviour setting up their house, without spending a single minute with thoughts, what they might cause negatively for the other people living all around them. 
    Ok – I reported this desaster to You. Done. Gone. From now on I look only in the contrary direction of our garden, where the world continues the same beautiful as before. Maybe I will be able to see and hear there from tomorrow on a double number of birds than so far. Could be getting a little tight now for the native residents on the trees there. But You can´t make all problems of the world Yours, would You agree? 
    This is an excelent introduction for what I wanted to comment to You today. And this determines immediately the music piece, which I will recommend to You today. But this will come in a few minutes towards the end of this post. 
    The same as in my private live, where I have developped own habits with regards to the appreciation and active search of certain kinds of people and on the other hand the complete lack of interest and avoidance of contact as far as possible with certain others, I have a clear definition, of with whom I like and prefer to deal with with regards to private and businesss purposes and with whom not. Let me give an example. 
    Due to our huge (more than 2000) product portfolio for any kind of industrial mechanical power transmission applications in all types of industries, You can easily imagine, that we find ourselfes within a frequently and regionally changing competitor field face to our customers. And this is good for all involved. 
    Competition is highly important for growth and progress. But what we always find is, that there are certain categories of competitors. I personally highly esteem and respect our strong, often international, honest, highly professional competitors. 
    These are people and companies which, with the same right and reasoning as ourselfes, are in fair manners competing for our customer`s orders. We here in Brazil, due to our decades long important role as one of the market and technology dominators, know all these, as I call them “friendly competitors” and they know us and we meet very often as exposition booth neighbors at the important industrial fairs and as participants in other public events and we have a totally clean and relaxed relationship with them. 
    For sure, there is no uncompliant or even illegal negotiation and/or shared market strategy agreement. We are in general not open at all to any violation of our corporate and any public laws, whereever we do business in the world. 
    This is a fundamental element of the Vulkan Group`s DNA and absolutely holy for all of us as worldwide acting Vulkan employees. But as I mentioned already , besides these “friendly competitors” we always and everywhere find ourselfes confronted with other breed. 
    I personally really detest people and companies, who are knowingly and intentionally lying, stealing, copying, disrespesting intellectual properties, betraying, violating public and ethical laws and thus trying to gain advantages during competition. No mercy with these comrades. 
    In many cases we have seen and celebrated, that such bad companies have been blocked for future business by several of our customers because of uncompliant and dishonest behaviour. I personally am strongly convinced, that such companies and people on the mid to long run can`t be successful and must fall. 
    But what we also sometimes see is, that such economically broken companies, which – totally different to companies like ours – publicly known and well documented, didn`t pay taxes or labor contributions etc. over years and years, don´t get closed down and removed from the market. 
    Here in this country this is one of the deplorable grievances, which we as serious and law & rules respecting enterprises complain about permanently. 
    In one of my future posts I will give You some insights about my active participation in the german and several important local national (in the different countries, where we are doing business) business associations and how we regard and treat such very important subjects and situations there independently of single company and people interests. 
    Now`s the time to give You my today`s music recommendation. Once more a famous Rolling Stones title: “Get off of my cloud”. (Here`s a nice, very early video recording:https://youtu.be/lIpvUJ5VAaw ) Please scroll up again and read one more time my report about “the wall” behind our (friendly) neighbors garden. 
    Perfect song, isn`t it?! I keep today`s post a little shorter than normally, because I`m very clear about the fact, that monday is always a much longer work day for You than during the rest of the week. 
    Wish You lots of productive action and success for this new business battle day. Set Your targets for this week and fight them through. 
    One of my management team members and meanwhile good friend years ago gave me as a present, which he bought specially for me in a tourist souvenir shop in Heidelberg, by the way one of the most beautiful, romantic german cities, a steel plate in the shape and decorated as one of the old blue and white typical german road name plates with the inscription “Alles ist möglich” – “Everything is possible”. 
    He had no doubt, that I would immediately love and from then on expose this at a preferential pace on the wall of my office at Vulkan do Brasil factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo. So, come on. “Alles ist möglich”!
    Let`s get our job for this week done – but not without having fun and pride !!!!!!!! See You tomorrow. May I count on this and You ???????

  • A really rich mixture for Your start today: Breakfast, Bosch and Marketing

    Good morning everybody. This wonderful sunday has just begun
    and I did not want to disappoint You and wanted to deliver my today`s post in time for Your
    morning coffee hour to You. It`s not still warm rolls from the bakery around Your corner, but I am sure, that You will enjoy it just as well. 

    You altogether are making
    me more than happy with all Your subscriptions, likes and wonderful comments to
    my posts in blogger, linkedin and Instagram and this is high energy fuel for my
    inner machine, which drives this blog. Many people ask me, whether I don`t
    sleep. 

    No – that`s not the point. I just have gotten accostumed to sleeping
    relatively little since years ago. But I`m not suffering any negative symptoms because of missing
    sleep. Anyhow I`m not sleepy during day and I have more the sensation, that my high
    energy and activity levels are just a different own “normal” than other people`s ones.
    And I immediately can recall the narrative saying, that the “Old Fritz”, King
    Frederick the Great of Prussia, also a highly active and somehow successful man,
    was famous and notorious for his very short sleeping time. Maybe my particular sleeping
    habits have to do with my second pre-name Friedrich (= Frederick). Who knows?
    I love such stories. 

    Not only cold numbers and facts. Everybody needs also a
    little – hopefully well controlled – irrationality in his live. Otherwise what
    would be different then between us humans and robots? This is also very important in my own perception of the management of business and treatment of employees and any other business partners. 

    Although I admire
    my name Frederick (which also was the name of the famous german emperor “Frederick
    the Red Beard”), I have not the least admiration or fascination for military
    style business resp. company organisations, which – believe it or not – still exist. 

    Top down command, one person decides everything and the rest of the
    organisation just executes the orders. Only employees with dried out brains can
    stand this. That`s the robots, I mentioned above. 

    What really fascinates and stimulates
    me, are organisations, where intelligent, educated, qualified, fully empowered
    employees on all the different organisation levels contribute highly motivated and
    with self-esteem to the development of the company`s strategies and goals. None of them a clone of any other team member. All and
    each of them different, mature, ethically oriented personalities of different sex and sexual preferences, colors, religions, cultures, habits and hobbies, but each of them always respecting the rights and the freedom of all others. 

    That`s
    exactly what enriches companies and creates the most powerful teams. That`s at
    least the experience I made during long years in different companies at different
    places with different people and teams. And that`s exactly our style and culture
    at Vulkan in general and in our company in Itatiba in particular. 

    This colorful
    picture leads me directly to the presentation to You of one of my most adored painters. Since my early childhood paintings have been fascinating me. I have no
    affection at all towards sculptures. They are all cold and dead for me. But I
    see paintings as living objects and I like very much colorful paintings like f.e frequently used in modern painting styles. Hieronymus Bosch (“Bosch”, “El
    Bosco”) is a very impressive and important painter for me. At the same time he is ultra modern and all but modern. 

    As a
    early dutch painter, Bosch lived between 1450-1516 in the Netherlands and his dreamlike
    paintings reflect all types of sexual and sadistic fantasies, amongst others. His most
    famous paintings are “The Garden of Earthly Delights” and “The Cure of Folly”
    (both exhibited in the Prado museum in Madrid, Spain). Since more than 500 years the
    speculation about Bosch`s painting style and the meanings of this are ongoing
    and have not concluded. 

    The painting I personally like most (see picture) is “The
    Ship of Fools”, an allegorical painting dated 1490-1500, which most propably
    has been influenced by the satirical allegory book with the same name (author:
    Sebastian Brant) which has been published in 1494 in Basel, Switzerland, and quickly spread all over Europe. 

    There were certan times during my career, when I hung this painting in original size (well, a cheap but nice replica of it) into my office and was convinced, that it symbolized my HQ in bloody Germany. Sometimes I remain in doubts, whether I should move it from my office room at home back to my office in our factory. 

    So, here I can comfortably come
    back to my comment from the beginning of this post, that everybody in my eyes
    needs some “controlled irrationality” to be really human and not a machine.
    This has – by the way – great importance and reflection exactly on economy, business and industry. 

    During my years with Schwarzkopf & Henkel (1999: Technical Director
    in the “flagship” hair colorants plant in Viersen-Dülken, Germany, where we manufactured day &
    night in highly automized, state-of-the-art highspeed filling and packing machinery B2C  premium products at annual market sales value of 1.5 Billion
    Euros; 2000-2003: Plant Manager/Managing Director at Henkel`s famous “La Toja” cosmetics plant in La Coruna,
    Galizia, Spain) I learned a lot about marketing and it`s importance. 

    Every 2
    weeks I participated a full day in the marketing meetings for our different product Business
    Units (oral, skin, hair, body care) together with my colleagues from all the spanish marketing and sales departments,
    once every 3 months I participated in our global divisional marketing meeting at
    Henkel`s HQ in Düsseldorf. 

    During my time as Managing Director of BOS
    Automotive, for whom I constructed and ramped up a huge car interior parts assembly
    plant in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, 2006-2009, I started to understand Toyota`s – and even more Lexu`s – main
    problem. Their cars could technically be considered amongst the best of the
    world, but in great parts of the world people regarded their cars as “cold”,
    not able to generate emotions and thus not able to really conquer and convince
    the customers. 

    Very interesting subjects and learnings for me, which since then have been helping me a lot, to understand and manage bettter our industrial
    processes and the development of new products. Engineers normally are not on the same page as salesman
    and their customers. 

    The core business of any company in my eyes is, to be strong
    in sales, customer management and relationship. For sure You need excelent products and be competitive. 

    But the fanciest products are for
    the birds, if nobody reckognizes them as fancy and buys them. Good round up for finishing this post? 

    I hope Your interest in painting, history, Bosch and also in
    marketing, customer and market management strategies and theories has been
    created, unless You are already deeply familiar with all this stuff and want to offer me now some lessons for advanced learning. 

    Enjoy the pretty sunday, relax and
    get prepared for monday`s new job battles soon starting. I`ll knock once again on Your social
    media doors tomorrow morning and hope, You don´t refuse to let me come into Your eyes, ears and brains with my post number
    5 then. 

    Before I really finish, one more quick last question to all of You as readers of my posts: Did anybody so far find any technical problem with my so far published posts? Double or triple words, texts etc…. ? 

  • Some insights to my practicle team creation & leadership experiences accumulated during the last 25 years

    Hi everybody. Are You alive and fresh again, so that Your
    eyes can safely make their journey through my 3rd post

    ? I mean, right now it is saturday morning here in São Paulo and last night was friday night, so it might be a little
    too early still for at least some of You ….. Don`t worry, You`re excused. I know You.  Leave my post besides and read it
    in 5 hours. 

    Let me please at first give You some important general comments about my blog. When I
    started this blog exactly 3 days ago, I did not really read or understand a lot
    about the technical features of the blogger tool and the google functionality. 
    I just identified it quickly as one of the leading tools for people running blogs
    and after having played 5 minutes with it, I decided, that it`s very easy to
    use it and that therefore I`d like it. Anyhow I did not want to become much more
    than a pure user of this tool. 
    All the details, how it`s built and works etc.
    were truly spoken not at all of my interest. But after having done my first 2
    posts and after having received a lot of fantastic feedback from wonderful people allover the world, I have been made aware of some general deficiencies,
    which definitely have origin in my very basic blogger tool know how. 
    Many
    people would like to become followers of my blog directly here in
    blogger/google, but we couldn`t find out yet, how to enable this. Others found
    difficulties to place their comments directly into my posts in blogger. I am
    really ashame for that, but must I admit, that I have not the least clue yet, how to get
    this fixed. Why not do some “crowd brain funding” and appeal to Your experience with regards to these purely technical system questions? 
    Maybe
    the one or other of You can easily give us blind fish the right hints, how to become a
    follower of my blog in blogger/google and how to access easily my blog posts
    for reading and commenting from anywhere in the internet. For all those, who for whatever reasons prefer
    this, You can also just follow me in linkedin and find my daily blog posts
    there as well. 
    But I wouldn`t love, to find my blog in blogger soon looking the same as a graveyard. This
    refers to the joke, where 3 people participate in the burrial of a person and –
    standing at the open grave – one of them says to the others “I can`t understand
    this. He had more 80.000 followers”. 
    And this little story leads me
    already to sharing with You a really  important
    learning experience, which I have made during the last 25 years of my career in general management  functions as Plant Manager, Managing Director, CEO and President for first
    class german industrial companies like Henkel, ElringKlinger, BOS, IWKA/Oystar,
    GEA Heat Exchangers and now – already since almost six years – for Vulkan at different places around the globe. 
    What I can state clearly so far is, that as a General Manager nobody nowadays, in
    the modern, professional world, expects You to be an expert in all business
    dimensions related to Your function and company. 
    With todays complexity, high velocity and dynamic of our businesses, to be true, hardly anybody
    would even be able, to accomplish this. This can still work only, when people start very early
    in a company and climb up the career ladder there during long enough years, maybe all their life long. 
    But I think, even this management model has more and more become very seldom and rare in our modern
    industry world . So, how to become able to dominate such multiple functions within the general business
    responsability safely and without permanent risk of heart attack, alcoholism and repeated divorce? 
    The only, but really easy and secure way, to master this challenge,
    is to find the right, qualified, experienced and trustful people, each of them an
    excelent expert in his area of responsability, to form a strong and highly motivated team with all of them, to give each of them authority, resources and support enough for
    becoming able, to do his job efficiently with high productivity,  and to constantly motivate and inspire this whole team
    for seeking ceaselessly new challenging targets and outstanding results. That`s it. So easy
    – please read the sentence again and confirm each single constraint mentioned.
    I have personally already had the luck and opportunity,
    to learn this in practice during more than 25 years in several totally different – all of these global leaders in their business segment– industrial companies of totally different structures, sizes, company
    cultures and in totally different industries, market segments, global locations and cultural, economical and political environments. 
    Thus I have gained plenty of good (and bad) experience with setting up such strong, highly
    motivated and excellently performing teams, which gives me really extreme pride and
    satisfaction. With this background described, I am showing You In this post a picture of my
    current management team, together with which I run successfully our fantastic and highly successful – even in Brazil and despite the Covid-19 crisis – company
    Vulkan do Brasil (200 employees, global product development & engineering center for our industrial division, highly efficient, lean, agile factory, 3 different aggressive sales divisions with different sales area responsabilities;
    for our main Division Vulkan Drive Tech (industrial, mechanical power transmission solutions and services) we have been named responsible from out
    of our company in Itatiba, São Paulo, and our sales & engineering offices
    in Rio de Janeiro, Bogotá, Colombia, and Mexico City, for Mexico, Central
    America, the Caribbean and all South America. 
    But don`t worry. I wil definitely not (ab)use my lovely blog for doing boring company propaganda. Anybody
    interested in more details about our familly held, globally acting german Vulkan Group, our more than 3000 products for practically uncountable applications in all different kinds of industries, can look up such information by himself on our corporate webpage www.vulkan.com or just contact me directly by email, on the fone or whatever other communication channel. If necessary, You can find my contact data in linkedin. OK ? You`re fine with that? Not sleeping again yet? Here still? 
    While writing this new post, I am
    listening to piano concerts from good old Mozart, one of my favorite
    classical music composers. But instead of making me relaxed, Mozart makes me quite angry right now. Due to this damned
    Covid-19 crisis, I needed to finally cancel my wife`s and my own holiday trip to
    Europe, originally scheduled (flights, rental car, hotel, entertainment, leisure activities in the south of Germany, Vienna, Prague, Budapest and Dresden, all already firmly booked since a year ago) for july. 
    One of the
    highlights of these unbelievably beautiful vacations should have been our attendance of a Mozart concert in the famous Vienna Opera House. Oh shit….. Gone now. Forget it.  Hope we can re-take all these fabulous
    plans next year once again. Please cross Your fingers for my wife and me. 
    One more crazy comment. People normally can`t believe when they drive in my car with me and hear my mostly playing music playlist, which mixes Rolling Stones titles with Mozart piano pieces. 
    This is a a very stimulant combination of power and equilibrium, of speed and slowness……You might want to try this out by Yourself one day. 
    Let me know, whether this made You feel as delighted as it does for me. Thank You for having accompanied my blog once more today. We`re a strong and motivated team now, agreed ? 
    I count on each of You guys ! Wish You lot`s of fun,
    relaxation, time with Your family & friends and whatever else You have planned for
    this weekend. 
    Don`t forget, to look up my post number 4 tomorrow. And please –
    follow me in blogger and linkedin and give me plenty of comments. If just positive
    ones, no problem. 😎 
    Greetings from my faithful assistant and companion Luke as well. And please remember: After
    action – Satisfaction. Bye for today…….See You back here again tomorrow.