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Hi all You globally distributed readers of my posts and followers of my blog. 

Let me at first say congrats to all of us! Today is the 1st anniversary of my blog since I published the first of my meanwhile in total 84 (including this one) posts on thursday morning, June 18, 2020. 

The initial idea behind my decision to become a blogger had been, to enhance the open exchange of personal & professional experiences with You and to increase my worldwide network of personal & professional contacts. What states clearly after exactly one year now is, that both objectives have been more than fully accomplished.

I must admit, that it still impresses me a lot, how many people at totally distant places all around the globe show ongoing interest in my posts, comment on these and enter into direct contact with me. That`s really amazing and it makes me feel enormously honored and proud. Thank`s for all that support and fidelity.

As I had already mentioned in my first post exactly one year ago, I fully considered and treated this project as a trial & error adventure. To be true, I did not prepare myself before stepping into it and I also did not really interest myself for the purely technical part. Once I had taken my decision to try out blogging, I just went into it. And exactly by doing so – last not least through many highly appreciated comments and very helpful hints from lots of You readers and followers of my blog – I started to learn and to – hopefully! – improve. 

During the first months I still wrote daily posts. Later-on I switched over to weekly publications only. And since the end of last year I have been taking the full freedom and pleasure, to just publish new posts, whenever I feel the wish to do so. This has proven very successful and satisfying for me and it has reduced enormously the pressure on me and given me a lot of relaxation and satisfaction.

One year ago we had no clue yet, how this damned Covid-19 threat would develop and impact our live and business. Here in Brazil we – truly spoken – just had started then to become aware of the real and true dimension of this threat for all of us and for the whole world. And our federal government did not contribute to the creation and increase of our awareness.

Like most other international companies and many national ones doing business in Brazil, we had immediately protected our factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, with lots of quite stringent measures since mid March 2020, when the first information about Covid-19 and it`s danger for all of us had arrived here.

 And this has worked somehow fantastically until today, so that we could keep all our processes and services for our national and international customers unharmed going on without any disturbancies or even interruption. 

Together with 69 other Vulkan do Brasil colleagues I have been switching over to working almost fully @ home instead of in my factory office mid March 2020 and after almost 16 months of experience with this we can truly state, that it works wonderfully and that it even has increased our productivity and performance. 

From out of this very positive experience we have already decided, that even if there came an “end” to the Covid-19 threat one day in the future, we would definitely continue with a “hybrid” (mixture of home office & presential = factory office) work routine. And we have already re-arranged and prepared most of the office areas @ our factory for this future “new normal” work routine & culture. 

In general I can say, that our company Vulkan do Brasil has perfectly overcome all challenges directly and indirectly related to Covid-19 so far until today. 

It has paid strongly out, that we had switched great part of our raw material and component supplies from imported to national sources during the last couple of years. And it has shown a huge strategic advantage for us, that we have practically kept all key capabilities, processes, experiences and resources in-house under our full own control at Vulkan do Brasil in Itatiba.

 All this and several other factors have enabled us, to continue our strong growth in the national and exportation markets with the products and services for all 3 Vulkan Group divisions – Vulkan Couplings (marine applications), Vulkan Drive Tech (industrial applications) and Vulkan Lokring (refrigeration applications). 

We can really say, that our company has somehow very sucessfully developped during the last 6 years from a canoe to a pleasure boat and finally has become a real battleship, which is prepared for all kinds of weather challenges out on the deep sea. We`re storm prove now! Ready for storm force 12 !

For me personally the by far biggest impact of Covid-19 was, that I had to refrain completely from national and international travelling, which before Covid-19 had been one of my main activities over years. Initially I had no clue, how I would be able to continue my business development and sales support activities purely from out of my home office in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, without catching any highway or airplane. But this was another important and impressive learning for me. 

As the stringent travelling and meeting restrictions imposed by Covid-19 have been affecting everybody and all companies around the globe in the same way, new methods for communication and for doing business had to be discovered and are beeing practised quite successfully since then. And – with certain limitations – this works quite nicely. 

I would even say, that many of the business travels, events and presential meetings, which we did in the past – seen from out of today`s experience – were not really necessary for achieving our objectives and could have been realised much more comfortably and efficiently by utilisation of modern online communication and conference tools, which we altogether use widely and easily since Covid-19 oblidged and taught us.

Since a couple of weeks quite good news appear. Several countries in different world regions are already firmly advancing with the vaccination process and are consequentially starting to alleviate restrictions for the population, which directly also easens business activities there again.

 Even here in Brazil vaccination continues at a rather fast pace meanwhile and at least in the state of Sao Paulo – but also in other federal states – the majority of the adult population is scheduled to become vaccinated until the end of this year. 

Let`s altogether cross our fingers for the progress of the light in the tunnel and prepare ourselfes and our businesses for the “time after Covid-19”, how ever that will be. 

I personally strongly believe, that improvement will come and that we will altogether become able to intensify once again our personal & professional interactions and activities on local, regional and global scale.

Nobody to describe better this positive feeling and conviction than the late John Lennon in his wonderful song “Imagine”:

https://youtu.be/YkgkThdzX-8

I am terribly curious now to receive Your feedback and comments. And congrats to all of us once more – we have just started the 2nd year of my blog! Thanks for accompanying it !

 Hi all You readers of my posts here in my blog. Time today to share some more experiences with You. Did You already realise that we`re almost 2 weeks in front of the first anniversary of my blog? Wow. Uncredible how fast time is running. 

Since my last post a lot of important things have happened here. Together with my colleagues Ferdinand Senske, VP Operations, and Luis Traúzola, VP Admin/Finance, I have decided to abandon our offices and instead of these we construct now a new, modern open meeting & working space area, which will be much more appropriate for our future “hybrid” work mode @ our factory in Itatiba. And this “constructive desctruction” (Schumpeter) has already started! If everything goes as scheduled, we should be able to inaugurate our new office area until the end of July. And we`re all terribly curious and impatient now. 

Two weeks ago I have received my first Astra Zeneca vaccination dosis. On the following 2 days I was completely knocked down. All my bones and muscles hurt and I was terribly sleepy. But since then I am fine again and I am waiting now for the receival of the second dosis, which is scheduled for August 5.

 Firmly trusting, that this will really come true, I have already started to plan my first international travels for from September on. Looks like I`ll participate in business development activities as well as in several visits to customers and sales & distribution partners in Guinea, Ivory Coast and Senegal then. And I am also already planning my first trip to Germany, where I have been invited as speaker for an important industry event, for October.

The particular experience, which I would like to share with You today, has to do with a cause of fraud in which I stupidly fell during the last week. 

I had just finished my participation in an endless and bothersome international online conference, was on the jump into our kitchen for having a quick lunch and waiting for my neighbor to look me up, because I wanted to discuss a problem with him related to one of the trees in his garden. You see – the normal crazy and often quite stressful home office & live routine. 

As if they had known exactly, how occupied I was right at that moment, a scammer called me on my mobile fone and intricated me in a conversation with him. With all the other subjects in my head, I ran into his trap and enabled him resp. his companions, to clone my whatsapp. Actually I did not even realise this, until about 10 minutes later a former employee and good friend of mine, who lives in Sao Paulo, called me and made me re-confirm, that it was not me, who had sent a message to him, asking him to help “me” out with a money transfer.

But from this moment on it came fully clear to me, what shit had happened. I called Alex Musolino,  our IT Coordinator, and asked him to check out with whatsapp, how I could revert this fraud. And I started sending Teams messages and emails to all my hundreds of contacts allover the world in order to alert them and to unarm the thiefes. 

This took me about 2 hours. Alex in between gave me the feedback, that whatsapp did not really offer effective support for me. What I learned from Alex was, that as I did not have activated the “2 stage validation” procedere in the safety adjustments of my whatsapp, the thiefes – who obviously are very familiar with all these technical features – had immediately done it after their gain of access to my account. 

Thus the only option, which whatsapp offered me to reestablish self-control over my account, was to wait uncredible 7 days (and nights) until the “2-stage validation” security mechanism let me enter my account again for the first time, so that I could redefine the access settings and kick the damned thiefs out again.

I am quite sure that You can understand my enormous frustration and rage about the thiefs, whatsapp and myself. I felt like the biggest idiot an earth, but I was not ashamed. 

First of all people like me, who are constantly active and who have always thousands of information and thoughts in their mind, cannot avoid that they commit failures. I believe we altogether must recognize that it is quite normal for human beeings to err from time to time. We`re not machines. Thank God ! 

Thus shit can happen. But the only really important desire for me is, that the same shit should never happen twice in my life. At least I try to learn my lessons and to avoid committing the same errors again. More or less it works, but there have unfortunately also been exceptions.

Finally – after exactly 7 days from the fraud attack on – I gained control over my whatsapp account back and – for sure – I immediately activated the “2 stage validation” security procedere. Hopefully my whatsapp is safe(er) now. 

This very important intensive lesson – that`s how I finally take it – has cost me lots of hours of writing messages and emails and doing calls to contacts and additionally in total 12.500 Brazilian Reais (approx. 2500 USD). Unfortunately some of my very close friends had also fallen into the traps of the thiefs and wired small amounts to them “for helping me out during emergency situations”, before my alerts reached them. 

For sure I repayed these amounts to my friends immediately, because there could not be the least doubt, that I had personally layd the paths for the thiefs to them and was thus responsible for the losses.

But I made some additional learnings through this “lesson”. First of all, Covid-19 and our new work and life routines have pushed us firmly and quickly into lots of digitised processes and systems, which we need to use around the clock for getting our things done. 

My strong feeling is, that we altogether have developped a much to high confidence in all these processes and systems and should turn much more sceptical and critical with these again. In the end lots of companies, service providers and administrative authorities have unexpressedly transfered lots of their former responsabilities and jobs to ourselfes. 

Thinking a little more in debth about it, I come to the conclusion, that I am – at least partially – working for my bank, for my telephone, TV, internet, streaming music, newspaper subscriptions and many other service providers – besides paying good money to them for receival of their services.

The second lessons was, that I am all but alone as an idiot. Almost all my worldwide contacts did also not have known yet about the option, to increase massively the security of whatsapp by activating the “2 stage validation” security procedere. Only a few of them had already known this and activated it on their mobile fones until I questioned them about it.

And as a third learning I came to the conclusion, that we may intellectually perfectly understand certain risks and take firm decisions, not to run into them. But – depending on our momentary activity and emotional situation – we cannot really rely on our conditions, to practice this strictly. Shit really can happen for everybody and everywhere, but at least everybody should take it as a lesson learned and make thus sure, that it does not repeat. And share this lesson with his friends and contacts !!!!

Enough sharing of experiences and learnings for today. Was this interesting for You? Maybe even helpful? If yes, I have already fully achieved my today`s main objective. 

Anyhow I will now enjoy the rest of this beautiful (lazy) sunday afternoon and hope that You are able to do the same. 

After so much modern technology related stuff it`s now definitely time for sharing this wonderful(ly) old video version of the “Sunny Afternoon” song of The Kinks with You. Enjoy it:

https://youtu.be/pzSWNEBdsVg

Have a great start in the new week. See You soon back here again….. Let`s then altogether celebrate the 1st Anniversary of my blog !!!!!!!

 Hi all You readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Time has come for writing a new post here once again. 

 Actually this is post number 80 in this blog since I started it and since I wrote my first post here on June 18, 2020. I am very positively impressed by the success of this project, which I had initiated from out of nothing more than just a spontaneous idea and the wish to try this out. Thanks to all You supporters who keep motivating and inspiring me for continuation. 

The first time I really attentatively noted the warning phrase “mind the gap” was when I visited the beautiful Sugar Cane Mountain in Rio de Janeiro about two years ago with one of our new African business partners. 

No matter all undoubtedly existing bad things in and about Rio, I continue with my deep passionate love for this Marvelous City since I had first visited it for the first time in July 1996. During the last 25 years I have been there very often, mainly for spending wonderful weekends with colleagues from our international Vulkan Group (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding) and/or with business partners and friends from all over the world, but also for meeting with our fantastic Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil) Couplings division sales & engineering team @ our office in downtown Rio and – last not least – for participation in the events and meetings of the Brazilian-German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (AHK, https://brasilien.rio.ahk.de/pt/), where I have the great honor to make part of the board of directors as one of the Vice Presidents.

To drive up to Sugar Cane Mountain with the famous cable car (https://bondinho.com.br/) is always exciting for my guests and for me. The incredibly beautiful view of the city, the harbour, the beaches, the long bridge across the sea from  Rio to Niteroi and the whole Guanabara Bay from the sightseeing platform on top is definitely one of my favorites in Rio, especially during the transition period from the late afternoon on, when the sun is still bright and the sky is still deep blue, and the soon afterwards starting evening, when the sun downs over the mountains in the back of the city, when the lights in the city are beeing switched on one after the other and when soon afterwards night falls over the whole breathtaking scenery. 

The audible or visual warning “mind the gap” at many places in the world alerts passengers to take caution when crossing the horizontal, and in some cases vertical, spatial gap between the doors of railcars (in Rio: the cable car) and the station platforms. As Wikipedia tells us furthermore, the phrase was first introduced in 1968 on the London Underground in the United Kingdom. 

Since then, several times “mind the gap” has been used as a warning for totally different situations in life, economy and policy. Here in Brazil the national oil & gas giant Petrobras has tried during the last years – against massive interventions of the majority owning Brazilian government – to apply this principle for the – very frequent and often very harsh – adjustment of it`s prizes for the re-sale of imported destilled fuels like gasoline and diesel at the Brazilian gas stations to the very high and very frequent fluctuations of the exchange rate gap between our local Brazilian currency Real and the “hard” world market currency US Dollar, in which Petrobras purchases these fuels.

I personally have – since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis – taken the “mind the gap” warning very serious with regards to the continuation of the uninterrupted and unharmed communication and information flow between myself, my management team colleagues, all our employees in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, our suppliers, service providers, all our sales & distribution partners in the whole Latin America region and – for sure ! – our customers all over the world, including the global network of our Vulkan Group sister companies and sales subsidiaries. 

After more than meanwhile one year since Covid-19 appeared and started changing the conditions and rules for our daily live and business, this has obviously become an even more important – I would even go so far and call it decisive – success factor for the uninterrupted continuity of our key business processes and it has also clearly become one of the facilitators of the strongly ongoing growth and success of our national (Brazilian), Latin American and global business and sales. 

In our case we had the great luck, that we had been fantastically prepared for such kind of challenge. Since the realisation of our first lean projects at our company from the end of 2014 on, we have very successfully implemented a full cascade of routinary daily “shop floor” resp.”admin floor” resp. “sales floor” meetings in all operations and administration areas of our company including participation of our employees in our offices in Rio de Janeiro, Bogota/Colombia and Mexico City. During these standardized and very short (15-20 minutes) daily (!) “lean” meetings all relevant subjects are “bottom up” beeing identified, analised and attacked with effective immediate measures. The culture for doing these meetings – since March 2020 most of them online – has very deeply penetrated our complete organisation during the meanwhile more than 6 years since we implemented these and has really become a fix element of our DNA. 

And besides this very well structured and extremely disciplinated daily “lean” meeting routine, for sure, we have also several additional routinary meetings on different levels of our company, for particular projects etc. I do – since my arrival @ Vulkan do Brasil in September 2014 – weekly follow up conferences (in the past very often – always when my travel agenda allowed this – as physical meetings) with each of my direct reports, means with all our management team members. This also works perfectly and my colleagues and I have meanwhile developped a very efficient systematic for treating all important matters during our weekly conferences of between 30 minutes and 1 hour without loosing attention for any important subjects but also without wasting unnecessarily time with not really important things. Our relationship, colaboration and cooperation is very trustful and we have meanwhile internalized a strong “we are all in the same boat” conviction.

Since mid March last year approximately 70 Vulkan do Brasil employees in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico are mostly or even permanently working from out of their home offices. Some of us go to our factory once or twice per week for doing things there, but many of us – like me – are practically fully working from more or less far away of our former offices in our factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, at our homes. 

And this works very nicely. Our HR team is permanently in contact with all of us. Thus we make sure, that – seen from the human, personal view – nobody gets “lost”. We have so far conducted 2 very detailed inquieries for all our home office workers and we are about to do another one right now, because we want to make sure, that we capture the real actual situation and feelings and opinion of our employees, which for sure develop and even change during such a long time and with the lots of different individual experiences accumulated by each of us.

Together with the Vice Presidents and all Directors of our company we are developping a new strategic plan for how we want to proceed with regards to our work and office routines from the beginning of 2022 on. We are – from out of the current situation – deeply convinced, that until the end of this year nothing important in this respect will change and that we will just continue with what and how we are doing within our company so far. Unfortunately we believe, that this also means that practically none of us will become able to leave Brazil for travelling abroad and also we do not foresee to receive any visits from colleagues and external business partners incl. customers and sales & distribution partners from outside Brazil to our company during the whole year 2021. But if the situation – we are crossing firmly our fingers that this will happen – changes, we will re-assess all these scenarios and take new decisions.

There is definitely no other song, which could describe our philosophy better than this classical one, which in the meantime has also become the hymn of my favorite British soccer team Liverpool and their home stadium Anfield:

https://youtu.be/OV5_LQArLa0

Hope You found this post interesting and I am once again looking forward to all Your comments and sharing of Your own experiences with the Covid-19 challenge. 

See You again here in my blog upon publication of my next post. 

Enjow the rest of this wonderful – at least here in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, Brazil – sunday. 

Take care! Stay healthy, happy and continue successful !

Dear followers of my blog and readers of my posts. It is time again for sharing some personal & professional experiences, which I have mainly made during the last 10 years, with You. 

The idea to do so came up in my head this morning, when I read newspaper articles about the problem with the big container ship blocking the Suez canal right now after an accident and the  massive delay of deliveries of goods from Asia to Europe resulting from this. 

Actually I called immediately my Vulkan do Brasil management team colleague Christoph Kuehnel, our Purchasing & Foreign Trade Director, and asked him, whether he thought that this could strike us.

Fortunately Christoph, who already had verified this in detail with his team of colaborators, calmed me down. So far no risk of delays for our supply stream of raw materials, components and finished products from our Vulkan Group sister plants in India and China and from several suppliers in China, Corea and India to our factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, was apparent. 

Also our own deliveries of couplings, brakes and backstops to lots of customers in the mining, steel, cement, sugar, paper, energy generation and many other industries in Asia and Australia are – thank God – so far not affected by the blockage of the Suez canal.

Since 2015 – going along with the strong growth of our sales of products manufactured at our beautiful factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, to customers all-over Latin America, incl. Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, all South American countries, the USA & Canada, Africa, Europe and Asia, we have optimized our supply chain tremendously.

For companies manufacturing their products in Brazil – besides many other challenges and disadvantages, which this beautiful country and it`s ruthless politicians endlessly invent for us – the currency exchange rate between the Brazilian local currency Real and the international “hard currencies” USD and Euro, in which we pay all our foreign raw material, component and finished product purchases and in which our global customers pay the products and services, which they buy from us, is extremely influental. 

What makes the whole story even more challenging, is the fact that with the unpredictable and thus not projectable currency exchange rate fluctuations due to the sometimes abrupt devaluation and/or valuation of our Brazilian currency in comparison to the USD and the Euro, supply chain, purchasing and sales strategies have to be almost constantly adjusted and optimized. This is one of the big differences which I learned 25 years ago, when I left Europe for Brazil and later-on for Mexico, where I lived and worked during the 6 years from 2003 until 2009, before I finally moved back to Brazil.

Sometimes it is really difficult for executives in Latin American subsidiaries of European, North American and/or Asian companies, to find the right understanding in their dialogue and reporting to their group headquarters for this very particular local business situation and the extreme dependency of our business and business performance on the very often quickly and dramatically changing economic and political environments. But this makes part of our missions and does also open lots of wonderful business opportunities. And it keeps us from getting bored and holds us awake.

During the last years we at Vulkan do Brasil have become quite experienced and successful with this. We constantly monitor all the local, regional and global economic and political environment factors which are influencing our business and we have quite often adjusted our supply chain, purchasing and selling strategies. A couple of years ago, we have practically decided to nationalize the purchase of all raw materials and components, which we can find on the Brazilian market. 

This strategy was very successful and we have had two major advantages so far since the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis. First of all we did not suffer any interruption of our raw material and component supplies so far. And secondly we could avoid great part of the massive cost increase for Brazilian customers of international suppliers just due to the huge devaluation of our local Brazilian currency. 

Christoph is one of the key players involved in all these processes and activities. We know each other since mid of 2013, when I hired him as our new Purchasing Manager at the GEA Heat Exchangers (today: Kelvion) factory in Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo, where I was employed as Managing Director at that time.

The circumstances of Christoph`s hiring at GEA Heat Exchangers in fact were quite funny and we always laugh, when we talk about it. At that time, within the complete restructuring and turnaround process, which I executed at our factory in Franco da Rocha, I was looking for a new Purchasing Director and in the final interview round I talked to several experienced candidates. But Christoph, besides his evident highly professional experience and the first-class references from his former employer ThyssenKrupp in Campo Limpo, Sao Paulo, was different to all other candidates because of his personal profile and development history.

Actually Christoph as a young man had decided to emigrate to Japan and to earn money there with all kinds of service jobs in restaurants. And after a few years he moved away from there to London, where he became hired as barman in a pub for some time. But quite soon he came to the conclusion, that this was not the kind of career and job, which he really wanted to do for the future and he decided to move back to Brazil for studying and getting started as an employee in industrial companies. And that`s how his professional career as supply chain specialist started. 

For me it was very fascinating to have Christoph with us in our management team. Exactly because he brought along a lot of very different and very practical experiences, which I valuated very high for our extremely challenging restructuring and turnaround project at GEA Heat Exchangers in Franco da Rocha.

Shortly before I left GEA Heat Exchangers for taking over my new position at Vulkan do Brasil in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, I personally negociated the biggest customer order since ever for our Brazilian company. Within this purchase order on hand, we had to design, manufacture and supply around 50 different big and heavy heat exchangers for two deep sea oil exploration platforms for Petrobras. These heat exchangers required the fulfillment of the worldwide highest engineering standards and had to be built in different steel materials like Duplex and Super Duplex, which require high experience and special technology for welding. We needed to purchase big quantities of seamless stainless and carbon steel tubes of different lengths and diameters. 

Immediately after the signature of the contract with the Brazilian EPC customer, I invited Christoph to accompany me during several business travels to China, where we looked up and audited lots of different local manufacturers of tubes and forgings. We travelled to many cities there and finally found first class material suppliers for the huge quantities of tubes and forgings, which we urgently needed and we placed purchase orders of several million US Dollars for all these materials there.

To shorten the story – everything went 100% right. All materials had been delivered in the agreed upon delivery times and without any major quality defects. We built and delivered all heat exchangers and they were delivered to our EPC customer, built into the process modules and installed on the platforms. Today both platforms (P75 and P77) are producing pre-salt deep sea oil (5000 meters below sea level) for Petrobras.

With this excelent and successful background it was no question for me, that I wanted Christoph to join me at my new company Vulkan do Brasil, where I was about to initiate a quite similar restructuring and turnaround project. And for my satisfaction, Christoph immediately accepted my proposal. And since then Christoph is Vulkan do Brasil`s Purchasing & Foreign Trade Director.

During the last years – as mentioned at the beginning of this post – we have nationalized lots of raw materials and components, which we formerly had purchased mainly on the Asian markets at interesting prizes, but with the disadvantages of the necessary pre-financing, quite high volume orders, much longer lead times (until landed at our factory) and with difficulties to do close follow up and auditing of the foreign suppliers. This was a lot of work for Christoph, his purchasing team and our colleagues from our QC department, but they altogether managed this perfectly and we are really very happy now with the results. 

On the other hand we have during this period of meanwhile more than 6 years strenghened our relationship to most of our suppliers and established very close colaboration with them, so that we can in very agile processes show, that not all “impossible missions” are really impossible and this has given us an enormous reputation and attractivity for our customers. The heavy industry like mining, cement, steel, but also others like Sugar & Ethanol mills, paper factories, power generation plants sometimes have extreme urgencies and to attend these properly and to find perfect technical solutions for our customers even during very limited time windows has become one of Vulkan do Brasil`s specialities.

I hope that this was interesting for You and I am – like always – highly interested in Your own comments and experience sharing. Look us up in our social media (Vulkan Do Brasil, Vulkan Drive Tech Latam, Vulkan Southern Hemisphere, Vulkan Africa) and contact us whenever we can help You solve problems and find solutions.

Enjoy the rest of this wonderful weekend – at least here at my home in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo – and take care. Stay healthy, happy and successful. 

 Good morning all You highly esteemed readers of my posts here in my blog. 

Once again I have decided to share some personal & professional experiences with You. This time I will talk about a subject, which very often is not very much welcome by people. But in my case, I have really enjoyed  all these challenges and experiences.

Last week, during my “factory day”, I have cleaned up my office at our wonderful company in Itatiba, so that our maintenance team can get started on tearing it down. Together with my colleagues Luis Traúzola, Vice President Admin/Finance, and Ferdinand Senske, Vice President Operations, I have decided, to give up our current 3 individual offices and to construct instead of these a modern, shared, open space, co-working office, where we altogether may use any of the 3 office desks to be installed there, whenever we visit our factory and work there. 

The idea to do so has clearly been generated based on our experiences during the so far almost 12 months long hybrid working schemes due to the threat from Covid-19. Since I have started to work mainly from my home office in Vinhedo in March 2020, I have visited our factory just for 1 day every 2-3 weeks and this has prooven fully suficient and efficient for me and my professional activities. 

Luis works at his office at our factory at least 1 day per week and Ferdinand, due to his high involvement in all operations activities on the shopfloor, works at our factory normally during 2-3 days per week. Thus we meet personally altogether at my office in our factory during 1 day just once every 2-3 weeks, which is fully suficient and keeps us perfectly aligned. For sure, we altogether meet regularly and individually during lots of internal and external online conferences every week, which makes our work rythm extremely focussed and productive. 

When I started to clean up my office, I at first opened the few cupboards there and I was astonished, how many folders, printed documents and books, which I had collected over the last 6 years without really ever using them again, I found there. This showed me, that the digitalisation process of my work had already started several years ago, not least because of my strongly increasing business travelling activities and the resulting repeated and long absence periods from my office and our company, which anyhow oblidged me to use digital archives on my notebook and on our corporate servers instead of physical documents, folders and books. 

Thus the decision, to throw all these cupboard objects in the trash, was very easily and immediately taken. I just had to seperate the items in different cardboard boxes, so that different materials could afterwards be disposed correctly and environment friendly according to our internal waste sorting system.

And another decision confirmed immediately. I would no longer need any cupboards for documents, books etc. in our co-working office. Just a little closed space for storing my safety boots and a handful other personal items. 

In the lay out for our new beautiful co-working office, which I will share in the future with Luis and Ferdinand, we have foreseen one small, cosy  multipurpose office for 2 persons and a small, but also cosy, meeting room for 3 persons. These 2 rooms shall give each of us the the option, to retreat from the co-working space to a more intimate and quiet place, where we will be able to do fone calls, have confidential conversations with 1 or 2 other colleagues or just relax a little, whenever needed. My own former office will be converted into a very nice, modern, professional meeting room for up to 10 participants. And on the glazed terrace in front of my former office will – once the Covid-19 threat has been overcome – serve us perfectly for guest receptions, coffee (for sure You remember, that I prefer black tea) breaks and business lunches. 

The redesign of our offices is just one small part of our overall “Factory of the Future” concept for Vulkan do Brasil, within which we will step by step accomplish the digital transformation of our our company. This will bring us up to a completely new level of excelence and performance and will enable us, to attend our customers even better than we do already today. I will present other important components of our dital transformation project to You during my next posts.

Above, at the very beginning of this post, I mentioned that people very often don`t like to leave their offices and clean them up before leaving. For sure, many of the people are doing this because their retirement has come and – even much better comprehensible – all those who have to leave their offices because of their dismissal – hate to abandon their former offices.

In my case I had become quite used to movals together with my familly during my childhood, when we changed the places of our residence quite a couple of times. Later-on, during my professional career, to move to a new location, many times in a far away, new country, has always been a highly appreciated event for me. And in this sense I always celebrated to clean up and give back my offices. And I also always took these situations as highly welcome opportunities to rid myself of no longer needed items and document collections from the past and thus empty space for new things to come. 

That`s the reason, why I am really excited and happy, that Luis, Ferdinand and I have taken this important decision and that we and our company will accomplish once again a very important personal & professional development and growth step. It`s fully true – I can`t wait for stepping into our new co-working office areas for the first time. And no doubt – I will share this experience here with You. 

It did not take me long, to come to the conclusion, that the traditional irish folk music song “The leaving of Liverpool”, here in a live version recorded about 50 years ago at the famous Royal Albert Hall in London, would fit very nicely to the above expressed subject.

The Dubliners were an Irish folk band founded in Dublin in 1962, which was very successfully popularizing Irish folk music allover Europe and gained lots of important music awards incl. the 2012 BBC folk music award.

https://youtu.be/2Ed9p_UBFCo

In fact Irish Folk Music has become quite popular amongst students in Germany during the 70s of the last century and has also brought the first “Irish Pubs” and their wonderful Guiness and Kilkenny beers to my country. But this was also the time, when the terrible violence between protestants and catholics, Irish nationalists and British unionists, was at the climax in Northern Ireland. Thanks god this nightmare has finally come to its peaceful end in 1998. 

I hope this was interesting for You and – like always – I am very curious for receiving Your feedback and comments.

Take care! Stay happy and healthy! I wish You lots of fun and success for Your next weeks business challenges and opportunities. See You again back here soon.

 Good afternoon all You followers of my blog and readers of my posts. Since my last post about 3 weeks ago I have been very busy mainly with the set up of the internal structures and key processes for several of the new strategic projects, which we have foreseen within our company for active realisation during this year.

For our completely new company Vulkan Africa (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/africa) my colleagues in Germany, South Africa and we here in Brazil have altogether defined the organisation and the main communication and reporting lines. Under my responsability and leadership as MD, two management teams will from now on be the motors for the development of all our business activities in the in total 48 different countries in the whole sub-Saharan region of the African continent.

We have set up the management team for Vulkan Africa and we also have set up a seperate management team for the Southern African sub region, where under the responsability and leadership of my colleauge Michael Lowin, MD of Vulkan South Africa, who reports directly to me in this function, all our business activities in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini and Zimbabwe shall be developped and executed from now on.

Two weeks ago we had the first meetings of both management teams and yesterday we realised a workshop with all our South African employees. Several of them live and work in Johannesburg, the industrial metropolis, where the headoffice and the service & distribution center of Vulkan South Africa are located. All meetings and conferences were held online, for sure, as we unfortunately still can`t travel there. It was once again a great pleasure for me to meet with all these wonderful, highly skilled and motivated colleagues.

At Vulkan do Brasil we have already actively initiated several projects within our “Factory of the Future” strategy, which will help us to accomplish the digital transformation of our whole company and factory in Itatiba during the next two years. This will help us, to step up on a completely new level of operational and administrational excellence and bring us additional competitive advantages, which shall enable us to achieve the aggressive growth plans for our national, regional and global sales during the next years.

As You can easily see, we are very busy and having a lot of fun with several really exciting and challenging projects besides our ongoing normal “day-to-day” business in Brazil and allover Latin America.

At Vulkan do Brasil we maintain fully all our protection measures, which we have implemented since March last year, when the Covid-19 threat has started in Brazil, and so far this has wonderfully protected us, our employees and our business. But the whole situation with regards to Covid-19 seems to run more and more out of control, at least in several regions of our country. The numbers of daily new infections and deaths continue very high and just today I read, that in many cities in the interior of the federal state of Sao Paulo, where we are located, the national health system starts to collapse and that the hospital beds for intensive therapy treatment are 100% occupied. Vaccination – like in almost all countries around the globe – is only very slowly proceeding. So better let`s cross our fingers  and continue with all firmly implemented protection measures – @work and @home !

Over the year`s end – during my “digital detox” period (see my first post from this year) – I found the time to read a handfull of interesting books, which I would like to shortly mention here for You.

In his book “Voce sabe com quem está falando?” (“Do You know with whom You are talking?”) Roberto Damatta, Professor for Anthropology at PUC-Rio, author of several important books and columnist for the daily newspaper “Estado de Sao Paulo”, describes and explains a phenomenon, which is very typical for parts of the Brazilian society and which You can encounter quite frequently in everyday situations. In such – very often really trivial – situations people try to demonstrate to others that they were exempt from obedience to rules and laws just because of their “superiority”. It is very interesting, that almost the same question asked to somebody in the USA or Europe “Who do You think You are?” serves for exactly the contrary purpose – to recall to somebody`s attention that the rules and laws are the same for all citizens, no matter their social functions, titles, positions etc. Nice to read, it delivers interesting background explanations and helps to understand the behaviour of certain types of Braziliens. 

In my last post I expressed my sorrows about the dramatically increasing gang violence in great parts of Mexico, which formerly were “white spots” and did thus not suffer much such crime. When reading the book “Mataram Marielle” (authors Chico Otavio and Vera Araújo) it came clear for me, that unfortunately in Rio de Janeiro, the “marvelous city”, which I like and love really so much, the situation is at least as critical as in Mexico and some places in Central America. It is uncredible, how deep the cancer of organized crime and corruption on all levels of administration, institutions and society has spread into the body of this megacity over the last decades. Great parts of Rio de Janeiro seem to be widely under the control of – on one side – drug gangs and – on the other side – the so called “militia”, where heavily armed and totally unscrupulous active, retired and former police men, fire brigade workers and soldiers take control of whole areas of the city and impose their own laws and rules on the population and extort it. And since a couple of years these criminal organisations even have developped “political branches” and intruded parts of the town administration. It is very difficult to imagine, if and how this shall be turned back once and how then normal, lawful and democratic live circumstances can be reestablished for the suffering and defenseless population. 

A real must for reading is the great visiting professor (London Business School), business thinker (he was one of the fathers of the term and concept of “core business”), consultant (Strategos) and researcher (Woodside Institute) Gary Hamel`s book “Humanocracy – Creating organizations as amazing as the people inside them”. I had already read his earlier book “The future of management”, but “Humanocracy” fascinated me with it`s very comprehensible description of how to overcome the bureaucracies and create human-centric organisations. I warmly recommend Gary`s book to all of You. 

Last not least I became very much interested in a book presented by the Peruvian writer, essayist, journalist, college professor and Nobel Prize (for literature) winner Mario Vargas Lhosa in one of his weekly columns in the Spanish newspaper “El Pais”. The author of the Spanish book “Madrid” is Andrés Trapiello. He describes in his book of 536 pages his meanwhile 50 years of living in Madrid and he presents the whole city to us, it`s streets, buildings, squares, parcs, but he also tells us a lot about the historical, cultural and political background of all these. A real must for all those – like me – who know and love Madrid. I have spent lots of weekends in this wonderful city during the almost 4 years between 2000 and 2003, when I was MD of Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s famous cosmetics plant “La Toja” in La Coruña in Galicia in the beautiful north of Spain. 

I hope I have not bored You too much with my todays sharing of some literature recommendations. Unfortunately only Gary Hamel`s “Humanocracy” is available in English, “Sabe com quem está falando?” and “Mataram Marielle” are only available in Portuguese and “Madrid” – as far as I know – so far only in Spanish. 

Right now I am reading Walter Isaacson`s biography of Einstein. But I have just read the first few pages. I`ll comment to You in a future post, how I liked this book and what importance Einstein and his uncredible work and live means for me.  

I have decided to close this post with the picture which I took by myself of a quite famous but unknown (is this contradictory?) paining – “The last supper”, painted by Marcos Zapata during 1753, which is hanging in Cusco`s, Peru, Cathedral Basilica. This large painting depicts Jesus and the twelve apostles gathered around a table preparing to dine on a guinea pig, which actually is today still served under the Peruvian name “cuy” as a culinary speciality in the Andes Mountains and in the past the guinea pig was an important food source for the indigenous Andean peoples. In one of my future posts I will share some remembrance from my extended weekend trip to Cusco and the Machu Picchu Inca citadel, which today is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.  

Enjoy the rest of this wonderful weekend – here in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, we have a brilliant blue sky, approx. 30 °C during the day and a light, pleasant breeze…….

I wish You a great start into the next week and hope to meet again with You here in my blog upon ocasion of my next post. Your comments to this post are highly welcome. Feel free to contact me wherever You prefer. 

 Hi everybody. Good to meet again with all of You here in my blog for my today`s post. Exactly 3 weeks have passed since the return from my year`s end vacations in beautiful Recife on the wonderful coast in the northeast of Brazil. And I can tell You, that this seems to have already been at least 6 months ago because of the lots of business and other activities which I have been realizing since I came back home to Vinhedo, Sao Paulo. 

The year 2021 has wonderfully started for us @ Vulkan do Brasil. Our factory continues full with orders for mining, steel, cement, sugar, oil & gas, energy and lots of other customer industries allover Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, US, Europe, Africa, Malaysia, Corea, China and Australia. That`s what motivates us and keeps us energized.

On the other hand we continue full speed with our development projects for several new products and we also have just started several projects within our “factory of the future” strategy, which will induce the digital transformation of our whole Brazilian company. 

You see – we keep going on very busy and with lots of very exciting and challenging activities. 

Today I will present to You one of our management team members, whom I consider a key player and contributer within all these activities. Ferdinand Senske, Vice President Operations of Vulkan do Brasil, and I have met a little more than 10 years ago for the first time and since then we have continuously worked together, made friends and have had lots of fun, suffering and success together.

During 2010, after my return to Brazil from Mexico, where I have been living together with my familly for in total 6 years and where I was responsible for – one after the other – 2 first class, technology and global markets leading, German automotive supplier companies and where I had constructed and started up a big assembly plant for interieur parts for all North American car makers, I had signed contract as Interim General Manager with the German Oystar (former IWKA) Group, a packaging machinery manufacturer, for their Brazilian subsidiary Fabrima Maquinas Automáticas in Guarulhos, Sao Paulo. 

This was a real fire brigade engagement because of the extremely difficult (to be true: bad) situation and state of the Brazilian company and of the whole global mother group. My mission was, to keep this company alive and running until somebody could be found for buying it. A real nightmare job, but very interesting and challenging.

On my first day at Fabrima in Guarulhos, freshly arrived from Recife, where I lived together with my familly at that time, I got to know with Ferdinand, who was the Technical Director there since a couple of years and kept the factory alive. During our first joint walk through the factory, Ferdinand and I developped a good “chemistry” and thus laid the foundation for our long colaboration and friendship.

Ferdinand, after his studies of engineering in Sao Paulo and an intensive training in business administration had made large and deep experience during many years as Production Manager and as Industrial Director at different Brazilian subsidiaries of highly successful German industrial companies like f.e. SEW and Beckum, before he finally joined Fabrima (then still belonging to the German IWKA Group) as Technical Director during 2006. 

I must admit, that I attribute great part of my own professional career success to the excelent companions and team members, which I had the luck and the talent to find and to join during my own professional journey at all the different companies and places on different continents, for which I have been working so far. And Ferdinand during the last 10 years has been a very strong supporter and contributer. He has a wonderful theoretical and practicle (!) technical background and experience and did never since he left the university 35 years ago stop to learn and to assimilate new experiences, technologies and know how. I think, that`s the “magic formula” for the unbelievable capacity, strength, leadership, respect and recognition, which he enjoys from all who know him and work together with him. 

When we managed finally to get Fabrima sold to it`s new owner, Ferdinand and I left this company. I was faster than Ferdinand in finding a new job and invited him, to join me at GEA Heat Exchangers Brazilian company and factory in Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo, where I took over responsability as Managing Director in August 2011. 

At GEA HX Ferdinand became our Director of Operations and during our joint time there, he – in evening and weekend classes – qualified himself further during a post graduate training at the renowned Mauá Institute of Technology in Sao Paulo as an International Welding Engineer. 

Our time at GEA Heat Exchangers was a real battle time. This was exactly the period of the total explosion (first) and total collapse (3-4 years later) of the whole Brazilian oil & gas industry, when almost all Brazilian EPC companies (Odebrecht, Galvão Queiroz, Alusa, …..) and Petrobras as their main contractor got involved into massive, huge, billionary corruption scandals. Hard times for honest, clean supplier companies like ours, which almost 100% depended on orders from the oil & gas industry. This was the time, where huge customer orders very often like troyan horses brought huge financial losses into the supplier companies. Thanks God we lurched through all these troubled waters unharmed. In the contrary – at the end of 2014, when at first I and soon after me Ferdinand left GEA Heat Exchangers, our Brazilian company just closed the best financial year of it`s more than 40 years old history. We left this company with our heads up and very proud on our joint – together with all other GEA Heat Exchangers do Brasil colleagues – success. 

Since the beginning of 2015 (I started there during September 2014; until the end of 2014 employed by both companies – GEA do Brasil and Vulkan do Brasil – as their MD) Ferdinand has been employed @ Vulkan do Brasil as our Vice President Operations and we have since then – together will all other Vulkan do Brasil colleagues – completely restructured our company, the factory and executed successfully 1000 exciting and highly successful projects, internally and for our customers allover Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, in the US, in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.

The management team of Vulkan do Brasil, which I have set up in Itatiba before year`s end 2014 continues unchanged with all members still in the same functions. Never change a winning team ! 

I hope this was interesting and maybe even helpful for You as a general experience sharing. Looking forward to Your own experience sharing, questions and constructive comments, which I love so much and welcome so highly.

No better song and video to close this post than the Avengers retake of Billy Joel`s great “We didn`t start the fire” song:

https://youtu.be/-onk-Qm7ATw

Enjoy the – depending on where You are located around the globe – more or less long resp. short rest of this (at least here in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, Brazil) wonderful weekend.

See You again back here in my blog upon the publication of my next post. Take care! Stay happy & healthy! Have fun and success!

Hi all You followers of my blog and readers of my posts. Before getting started on writing my first post during 2021, I would like at first to to wish all of You all the very best for this still quite new year. I hope, that none of You has fallen ill and/or caught Covid-19 since we met here for the last time shortly before X-mas. Take a hell of care! Things around the globe continue very critical with respect to this pandemia- despite the words of too many ignorants and liars and  the still quite slow start of the vaccination in meanwhile 65 countries, but – what a surprise ?! – not yet here in Brazil. As explained by our federal health minister, General Pazuello, we still need to wait for “day D” and the “hour H” for vaccination start in Brazil. 

Do You remember my comment in my last post with respect to my own curiosity about my conditions and discipline to realise the plan mentioned here, to go 100% offline of all my social media channels incl. whatsapp, instagram, linkedin, Xing, as well as of all my private & corporate email and  online conference accounts (Teams, Zoom, Cisco Webex) and – last not least – keep also my mobile fone completely switched of during at least 1 full week during my year`s end holidays? 

I must admit, that this has never come into my mind as an intention during the last 30 years of my life, when I kept all these communication channels open and active during all days and nights of these 30 years uninterruptedly for private and professional purposes. The only off-times I gained, happened without my active participation during the so many flights to all kinds of national and international destinations, to where I went during all these years constantly for professional (approx. 98% of all flights) and private airplane trips. And I can frankly admit, that I would even have considered such intentions as totally crazy and impossible for me to realise.

But – as mentioned already in many of my earlier posts – my experience has led me to the conclusion, that life is beautiful and wonderful and that many things are much more easy and important for us to realise, than we tend to think. So why not give this a try?

There were 2 reasons for my plan, to use my year`s end holidays for doing such a challenging experiment. First of all I had reached X-mas 2020 totally exhausted by my 9 months long uninterrupted online activities incl. endless participation in webinars, conferences, H2H (Human-to-Human) calls, chats etc. Having initiated my new home office routine at our house in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, immediately after my return from Paris on March 18, 2020, where I had participated in an intensive French language training at the renowned Alliance française, and the confirmation of my positive Covid-19 test, I plunged deeply into the new digital and online work and live and communication mode, lost very soon completely the feeling for the weekdays and the hours of the clock. Doing such activities permanently on different continents, there is no general “off-time”. The world never sleeps completely.

 Apart the symptoms of a starting burn-out and total information overload, my management team colleague Marco Santos, HR & Special Projects Director @ our company Vulkan do Brasil, mentioned to me his intention, to recommend to all our Vulkan do Brasil employees, to go totally offline and disconnect completely during the year`s end period for at least a couple of days. This sounded like a wake-up call to me. And I have always been open and interested in gaining auto-experiences and development of new life & work culture tools and styles.

I told all my Brazilian management team colleagues and also some colleagues in our Vulkan Group HQ in Herne, Germany, my plans. The reactions came immediately and without exceptions. Everybody doubted, that I would find the means, to go totally off-line for more than a few days – if ever. This increased enormously my motivation and gave my discipline a strong boost.

But things did not start as planned. My original plan had been, to spent 1 week together with my wife and our sons in Recife, where we have our 2nd, very small (flat) home close to the beach. To leave Recife for 1 complete week together with my wife only for flying to another wonderful beach region in the further north of our country and to come back to Recife from there for spending a final week together with our complete familly in Recife, before our return from there to Sao Paulo. 

So far my planning. Now reality started. 2 days before our departure to Recife my wife was tested positive on Convid-19. As we had no chance to postpone our complete holidays, we decided to pass my wife`s quarantine time at home, to cancel all already booked reservations for our trip to the northern region and to spent instead of this just 2 weeks altogether in Recife. But for sure – not earlier than after the re-testing of my wife (and all other familly members) and the receival of the liberation for travelling by our doctor.

But this completely scrapped my original plans for going totally off-line by leaving my mobile fone, my notebook and my ipad at our flat in Recife, when departing from there to Sao Luis, in Maranhão state, together with my wife.

This was not exactly according to my original intentions, but it also was not a game stopper at all. I have a strong ability for  always developping “plans  B” and “plans C” for all kinds of situations. A new challenge popped up, once arrived in Recife. As there was no wifi internet connection in the building of our flat, I needed the internet hotspot of my mobile fone for gaining internet connection on my ipad. How should this allow me to disconnect? There are always solutions. You just need to look these up. In my case it was very easy. I switched off my mobile fone, took out the telefone chip, put it into my ipad, deleted on the ipad all my social media and communication apps and all my corporate and private email accounts. From that moment on I could only use my ipad for internet browser surfing and as an access gate to my numerous apps for all the national and international newspapers and magazins, which I have suscribed since longer and which I definitely need for daily lecture. People believe me, this was a really perfect solution for the realisation of my plans to go off-line online. 

I need to explain, that like for a great part of the rest-of-the-world the Covid-19 crisis and my new home office work and live routines had made me re-think lots of things and so I had decided to cancel all my paper subscriptions of newspapers and journals and since about May 2020 I am now exclusively reading newspapers and magazins in their digital online versions. Which turned out fantastic. Much easier access and handling, much cheaper subscriptions and no more huge amounts of unwanted and unnecessary paper waste in our house. Even my wife loved this improvement process!

Believe it or not, I switched of my mobile fone, my notebook and deleted all social media and communication channels on my ipad during January 6, 2021 and I only re-activated all these devices and functions today, means 12 days later.

For sure I gave automated informations about my absence to all email senders and I had given my management team colleagues and my boss in our HQ the mobile fone number of my wife for any emergency situations. But none of them called my wife or sent whatsapp messages for me to her. All these wonderful colleagues and comrades let me relax for full 12 consecutive days and nights. Amazing. Incredible. Thanks to all You great guys over there in Sao Paulo, Bogotá, Mexico City, South Africa, Australia and Herne, Germany. 

But – like always in live – once more there was no “free lunch” for me, or – like the Brazilians wonderfully say – “every coin has 2 sides”. When I moved my fone chip out of my ipad, put it back into my mobile fone and re-activated it, 587 (fivehundredeightyseven) unread emails appeared in the outlook icon of my mobile phone. This did not really surprise me. Exchange of information and taking decisions make a totally normal and important part of my job responsabilities and work routines. So I didn`t feel worried about that. I skipped quickly through all these 587 emails, deleted scrap and sorted all important messages into my quite sophisticated and extremely efficient mailbox system (“today”, “hot”, “to do”, “Follow up”, “WIP”), in the which I have subfolders for colleagues, teams, external contacts, customers, projects and many other separation categories, which allow me to work this up following clear priorities and without the least loss of control and information. 

To look these 587 unread emails up and to sort them into my system took me little more than 3 hours and gave me an excellent idea of what has happened within our company during my “lost (better: won)” 12 “offline days”. Only a few subjects were so important, that I made 1 very short immediate fone call to my management team colleague Luis Traúzola, VP Admin/Finance at Vulkan do Brasil, answered quickly 3 emails, made the – late, overdue – bank transfer payment for my son’s private school fee and that was it. Good job done. Back to vacations!

To resume this for us – I made an extremely important and beautiful experience during these 12 days. Stress or any desire, to interrupt this period never came into my head. I must admit, I felt unbelievably free and satisfied without receiving or doing fone calls, emails, messages, posts, comments, conferences and other communication activities. You can`t imagine my happiness, to open an ice cold can or bottle of Brazilian beer at the beach or in a nice bar or restaurant. 

But this created a new “open bill” for me. Flying back home to Sao Paulo on monday and getting started “on the job” again on tuesday, I definitely need to re-take my daily sports activities, return to much less and much more healthy food and reduce my beer consumption by not less than 90% – at least until I have reached my target weight again and re-established a more disciplined daily activities routine. But no doubt – I will manage this properly. And I won`t take too long for it…….

When I developped the story for this post in my head this morning, the idea to mention a very particular cultural experience from my in total 6 years of tremendous life & job experience (2003 – 2009, thereoff 3 years as MD of ElringKlinger in Toluca, Estado de Mexico, and 3 years as MD of BOS Automotive Products in Irapuato, Guanajuato) in Mexico.

In the very popular, traditional Mexican Mariachi song “Caminos de Guanajuato” there appears the refrain “No vale nada la vida, La vida no vale nada, Comienza siempre llorando y asi llorando se acaba….” (“Live is worth nothing, Live is worthless, Always starts crying and so crying ends……). But this is a very nice song about the beautiful state of Guanajuato and it`s wonderfull places like Guanajuato city, Leon city, the Cubilete mountain and other nice places more, which my familly and I have had the great luck, pleasure and joy to know personally during our 3 years there. It is all but a negative or depressive song. But it reflects deeply the omnipresent ambivalence of great parts of the Mexican culture, traditions and emotions. Finally not so different to the “2 sides of each coin”, which the Brazilians describe so beautifully. Just much stronger…..

Unfortunately the Mexican state of Guanajuato, which during my times there was almost a quiet “white” area, where the Mexican drug gangs did not persue their wars against each other, against the government forces and did not commit their terrible crimes. Since a few years this has obviously been changing dramatically, as several friends, former colleagues and employees, who still live in Guanajuato state, told me during chats and talks. Actually during the first week of 2021 alone during 2 terrible massacres almost 20 people have been killed by murderers, several of them during a mourning ceremony in a private house. Today the state of Guanajuato has become the absolute number 1 state in Mexico with regards to violent crime and murders. Unbelievable. So many criminal incidents in Guanajuato, Irapuato, Celaya, Salamanca and the many small villages over there in this beautifull region. 

I mention this, because I wanted to take the opportunity of this post, to express all my best wishes for all my friends, former colleagues, employees and business partners in Guanajuato state. My familly (my son is born in Toluca and has – besides the German and the Brazilian passports also the Mexican nationality) and I are uninterruptedly crossing our fingers for all this crazy, terrible violence coming hopefully soon to it`s definitive end. Like we use to say here in Brazil “the hope dies last”.

How shall I finish this post without sharing the beautiful Mariachi song “Os caminos de Guanajuato” in it`s original version presented by the late, great Mariachi musician and composer José Alfredo Jimenéz:

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=f_iWQ7ol1QM&feature=share

Hope You enjoyed this experience sharing and I am very curious now to get to know, if the one or other of  You has also already made practicle experience with going offline – at least for a few days – over X-mas and the year`s end. 

See You soon here on ocasion of the publication of my next post. I`ve collected some more good experience stuff for sharing with You. Take care. Stay happy, healthy & successful. 

Good afternoon all You faithful readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Time has come, to write my last post here during the year 2020. I have been extremely busy and productive during the last weeks and my countless online conferences and meetings supplied me with an impressive colection of subjects and experiences, which I would like to share openly with You in this and in my next posts.

What a crazy year was this? If I had seen half of what has finally come over all of us in the whole wide world since the outbreak of Covid-19 at the beginning of this year in a movie, I would most propably have fallen into sleep or left the cinema resp. switched the TV channel. Such really impressive stories can`t be invented by human writers and can only be imposed by live reality, which is wonderfully unlimited with regards to the invention of new situations and developments, 

On March 17th, 2020, after an initial shock I cancelled all my already booked flights to Europe, Africa, Australia, Latin America and within Brazil for the rest of the year and initiated my since then continuing new home office reality. It took me only a few days to get familiarized with this and I must admit, that since then I passionately love this way and style of working. For me to go to our factory once per week is more than enough. And to be true,  this has not been so much different for me since several years already due to my almost normal travelling absence. My team and I have since long developped and established our frequent online and fone conferences and conversations. That`s nothing new for us. And we have become quite skilled in doing this efficiently. Otherwise our business would not flourish the way it is doing unquestionably.

The only – but very important – difference is, that since mid of March, I am attending all these conferences and calls from out of my home office in our house in beautiful Vinhedo in the interior of Sao Paulo. But home office doesn’t mean, that I was working in an office at home. Actually I am constantly moving to different places within our house and in our garden for working. This depends just on the weather, my mood, the activities of the other familly members and – sometimes too much noisy – activities of our neighbors or their gardeners. I love this total flexibility and the beauty of the different places. It inspires me and enhances my creativity. To feel good helps me enormously to be productive and efficient. And for sure my faithful companion Luke, our 3 years old golden retriever, is always by my side. It feels fantastic, to have always somebody, who understands and supports me, on my side. I freely can talk Portuguese, Spanish, English, German and even French with him. He`s the only member of our familly, who understands this all. 

But before continuing with my sharing of personal & professional experiences with You, I need to mention personally my good friend and business partner Joaquin Nicolás Bastias Blasco, Sales Manager @ our exclusive distribution & service partner SCEM Ltda (https://scem-chile.cl/) in Chile. During our year`s end online conference with the top management and owners of SCEM Ltda, Joaquin mentioned that he is a fierce reader of my posts in this blog and I was so happy about this, that I promised him, to mention him here. Enjoy this, Joaquin. You know, that my words count gold and that I honestly always try to fulfill my promises.

Amongst the many online events, in which I have participated since March, I liked very much the “A look ahead to the world in 2021” live digital event to which exclusively readers of the international weekly newspaper The Economist had been invited. During less than an hour Tom Standage, Deputy Editor of The Economist, gave us in-debth predictions incl. highlighting key issues and trends for the soon starting New Year 2021. What most impressed me, was Tom`s interpretation, that 2021 will in great parts become “Take 2 of 2020”. As if we had the opportunity to record 2020 once more. Now the way, we originally intended. Since this event with Tom, I have reflected a lot his words and I must admit, that I agree fully with what he predicted. No matter all the new projects and plans, which we have developped and realised, some of them at least started, many many originally planned activities and projects – due to the limitations and restrictions imposed on us by the Covid-19 crisis – have not lost any of their importance for us, just have remained on hold and are waiting to be re-taken again by us, hopefully sooner or later during 2021. Thus to label the year 2021 as the “Take 2” of the year 2020 really makes a lot of sence for my concern. 

Many of my friends, colleagues and business partners allover the world have frequently asked me during the whole Covid-19 crisis period, whether I would be suffering not beeing able to travel and whether I was desperate for becoming able to start travelling again. My sincere and true answers surprised most of them. Actually I have been travelling 2 – 3 times more than in the last years, where I was almost permanently on the way to places on many continents. What I mean is, that by meeting people online – which has become my main activity meanwhile since about 9 months ago – I could multiply the encounters with people at totally different geographical locations enormously. I practically started to jump from continents to others within hours. My experience with this has been fantastic. You can consider me as one of the rare individuals, who insist that by meeting people online, even totally new people, You can develop emotions, criate the famous “chemistry” and feel sympathy and antipathy, get excited and/or become annoyed resp. frustrated. There is not necessarily soooooooooo much difference to physical meetings, but this depends massively on the single participants, the culture and the climate – and for sure – on the subjects of these online events.

Good enough for today. I`m on vacations now and I need to catch another ice cold Paulaner wheat (Weiss, or Weizen) beer, which I happily discovered in a new supermarket in Vinhedo yesterday. Over years end my familly and I – like always since my wife and I met there for the first time about 17 years ago – will be flying to our 2nd home in the wonderful beach city Recife, 2646 km away from here, in the beautiful northeast of Brazil. 

My colleagues and friends can`t believe it, that I promised to switch off all my digital and communication devices (notebook, ipad, iphone) during great part of the in total 3 weeks, which we will spent there. I will share my experiences about how this went with You in my first post here in this blog in the middle of January 2021. And I already share Your curiosity.

No song fits better to this post then great Gilberto Gil`s fantastic “Vamos fugir” (Let`s flee), here singing it  together with the Brazilian superstar Anita during one of the impressive live shows, which we all miss so much – amongst so many other liberties and activities:

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=PKY5LcOnmWg&feature=share

I wish You a Merry X-mas and a Happy New Year! Take care! Stay happy & healthy! 

 Hi all You faithful readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Time again for a new post today. The break since my last post in this blog has not really been a break for me in the sence, that I had just rested lazy doing nothing. Not at all. 

To be true, during the last months my activity level has risen even more due to many important international events, conferences, projects and workshops in which I have participated almost around the clock. For me in Sao Paulo, Brazil, to participate in such online activities steered in Europe and Africa very often means to switch on my notebook at 5am or even earlier. When these are finished, my normal busy Brazilian activity day directly starts. In the afternoon the activities in great part of Latin America and US/Canada dominate and in the evening the center of my activities moves to Singapore, Malaysia, Corea, China and Australia, where we from Vulkan do Brasil are also heavily involved in projects and other activities together with our Vulkan Group colleagues in the local subsidiaries and customers over there. Vulkan is almost everywhere around the globe. We are on all continents.

But I really like this active, dynamic way and style of living & working. To be true, it stimulates me terribly and it keeps me highly motivated and productive. The really only important thing is, that I need to reserve some time every day for reading the several international newspapers (for sure the digital versions) which I have subscribed and for which I am adicted, to arrange a free hour for using our wonderful home gym (which we have inaugurated just a few weeks ago) for doing some exercises and to spent some time (dinner, table games, movies,….) @ the end of the day with my wife. And for sure for viewing together with my son Gabriel, who is – the same like me – a fierce supporter, the soccer plays of our favorite team Flamengo on the TV. But the familly member which accompanies me almost all day long during all my activities is my faithful assistant Luke, our golden retriever.

On the weekend my activity routine changes dramatically. Only a few strategically important conference calls, lots of chats with friends wherever they live in the world, plenty of time for just hanging around, reading, listening to music, drinking tea, water, fruit juice, beer, caipirinha, wine, cachaça, whisky, rum, vodka, tequila, pisco and for going out for shopping together with my familly, visiting friends and/or having lunch resp. dinner at places, which we love or want to try out. And writing posts, for sure (:- 

Yesterday I noticed a RFQ from our Vulkan colleagues in Turkey, which especially called my attention. Our Turkish heavy industry customer – after long years of heavy duty service and without having created any head aches for him – wants to replace one of our hydraulic brakes sold to him almost 15 years ago. Together with the technical specification for this RFQ our Turkish colleagues sent us a picture of the name tag of this brake.

I fell in love with it immediately. This brake has been manufactured at our factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, Brazil, just shortly after the aquisition of the company Sime do Brasil, which my predecessor had geniously arranged in 2003. And the name tag of this brake still shows the logos of both companies, Sime do Brasil and Vulkan do Brasil. Only a few years later Sime do Brasil became fully integrated into Vulkan do Brasil and since then the former Sime do Brasil brakes portfolio has become massively extended by new and further developped brakes of all construction types and for all imaginable kinds of industrial applications. Actually Vulkan do Brasil since then has meanwhile become one of the market and technology leaders for industrial brakes and braking systems – not only in Brazil, but also globally seen.

When I took over responsability @ Vulkan do Brasil as Interim General Manager in September 2014 – at that time still MD of GEA do Brasil in Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo – I met Josias and all other key players of Vulkan do Brasil during my first work day in Itatiba. And I was immediately deeply impressed by him. I learned about his career, which he had actually started – from today`s sight more than 21 years ago – at Sime do Brasil and which with the aquisition by Vulkan do Brasil brought him to Vulkan do Brasil. 

When I met Josias, he was responsible as Operations Manager for production, engineering, maintenance, quality control and logistics. And he was – no matter the deplorable state of the whole company and it`s messy factory – doing a bloody good (fire worker) job in this multiple responsability function. But when Josias gave me an idea of the professional experience, which he had already accumulated until then and taking into account his brilliant engineering education and the fact, that he – despite his already long company affiliation – was still quite young, I concluded, that he was not in the right position – seen as well from his personal standpoint as also from the company`s standpoint. 

A man with so impressive technical product and application know how and expertise – that was directly my conviction – had to be inserted totally different in the company. When I found out during the next weeks, that our product portfolio had been neglected during several years and that we were loosing attractivity and competitivity on the market with our products, the idea popped up in my head, to create quickly a product development department, to equip it with the necessary resources and to give it the necessary autonomies and to suggest to Josias, to become the founding father and leader of all this.

My disappointment could not have been bigger. When I confronted Josias with this idea, he initially rejected it. He was concerned, that he would loose power, importance and responsability in our company compared to his actual position. Instead of for more than 150 employees (we still had too many of them at that time, but I was already about to correct this…) he would be responsible for only a group of 5 – 10 employees as per my proposal. And he also was not convinced, that such a new development department would be successful, taking into account the desperate general situation of our company.

To make the story short – I finally managed to convince Josias and on January 1st, 2015 he started as Director of our freshly foundet Development of Products, Processes and Applications (DPPA) department with me as the stakeholder and supporter and defender. As per my offer, Josias was allowed, to chose whoever he needed and trusted from our engineering staff for setting up his new area of responsability. 

Another strategic initiative was beeing launched by us at the same moment. Under the coordination of our HR & Special Projects Director (he was awarded this new position at the end of 2014, when I set up a completely new management team for Vulkan do Brasil) Marco Santos (Marco, by the way, has also originally started his career at Sime do Brasil and meanwhile – still a quite young man – also has more than 20 years with us) , we launched our project “fishing”, within which we looked up several highly qualified, experienced and culturally seen nicely fitting to us and our future company environment, former Vulkan do Brasil employees and convinced some of them, to come back to our company and to join our completely new DPPA department. Thus within only 3 months we created the “criticial minimum mass” of experts which Josias needed, for really becoming able to get started with the new development department and projects. 

Today we are already in the 6th successful year of our DPPA department (in Portuguese: Desenvolvimento de Produtos, Procesos e Aplicações) and we can proudly look back to several successfully developped and launched improved and completely new products, amongst these couplings, brakes and backstops.

During his first year as DPPA Director, Josias has elaborated and implemented a very efficient and well structured internal process for the development of new products, which includes several fase examinations and approvals. He has also implemented a category system for the different types of development activities. And from the first hour on, our DPPA department members document all their activities ongoingly in individual logbooks. Once per month Josias, his “right hand” Marcel Moraes (Development Manager) and me do a detailed follow up of all activities of the DPPA department. 

The work progress is monthly beeing measured, determined and documented in our “workmap status” tool. Once per quarter, Josias, Marcel and me have a well structured steering committee conference upon our development activities and plans together with the CEO of the Vulkan Group, the Global Development Director of the Vulkan Group and the Global Sales Director of the Vulkan Group for our industrial division Vulkan Drive Tech. Thus we are always fully aligned and define all new strategies altogether. 

But Josias has not at all become a pure office worker. In the contrary. It was very clear for Josias and me from the beginning on, that for becoming really able to execute product development work, Josias and his development team members needed to constantly observe and accompany the world (technology, materials, suppliers, customers and also competitors) outside our own company. We did not foresee any space for “egg heads” and “pure theorists” in our organisation. In the contrary – our goal was a team (during the first 2 years we even called it internally “Elite Squad”) of highly qualified, motivated and agile women and men of bones, flesh, brains and blood. 

Besides this I have invited Josias – the same as many other management team members – to accompany me during my very frequent trips to customers and events (congresses, conferences, exhibitions, etc…) in Brazil, allover Latin America, Germany, India, US and – during the last 2 years – Africa and Australia. 

Josias`latest “baby” is our internal “Brain” group, which we set up about 2 years ago with a special focus on new technolgies and the digital transformation wave, for which Josias also became our leader. The activities of this group led us very quickly and successfully to the technology colaboration projects with several universities and research institutes in Brazil and in Germany. 

All these joint activities – and for sure the endless hours and countless beers at numerous airports and during (good and lousy ones) hotel overnight stays at so many different places in the world – have strenghened our experience with each other and helped us, to create a wonderful relationship of trust and colaboration and gain plenty of fun. During one of our trips, I invented the title “Mr. Brake” for Josias. He is undoubtedly our most experienced expert for all types and kinds of brakes, braking systems and their applications in all kinds of industries. But this should not reduce his merrit and experience with regards to his technical know how about couplings and backstops and their industrial applications, which he similiarly dominates perfectly. 

Here a song, which Josias will appreciate:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0_mbmeqUpE

Hope this was interesting for You. I am really proud on my success with the development and execution of all these different strategies, initiatives and projects together with my great team of colleagues. 

I wish You a wonderful weekend. Fill up Your batteries for next week`s battles ! I`ll go directly to the fridge now……