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 Hi all You highly esteemed readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Due to the really intensive professional activities in which I have been involved massively during the last weeks, I did not find earlier the right moment for writing a new post here in my blog. But today`s definitely the right day and this is definitely the right hour for doing it. 

Finally – after a quite “cold” week with quite low temperatures (approx. 18 °C) with several rain showers and some stronger blows of wind – yesterday another weekend with wonderfully warm and sunny weather has arrived here in Vinhedo, where I live with my familly and from where I work at least on 4 days per week from out of my home office. 

The idea to share my meanwhile 25 years long experiences with the city of Sao Paulo with You popped up in my head last night, when I visited friends over there. Actually I had dropped my wife and 3 of her girl friends at at the flat of another girl friend of them in the afternoon. The girls held their monthly “girls party” there and I used this opportunity for arranging a meeting with a great friend of mine.

I know Bernd Mayer since meanwhile more than 10 years. At that time Bernd was the Managing Director of the VDI Brasil (https://www.vdibrasil.com/), the German Engineers Association`s branch in Brazil, and we met for the first time upon my participation in the VDI`s wonderful annual “Brazilian-German Engineering Day” event in Sao Paulo. 

My great friendship with Bernd continues uninterruptedly since then and we have met during all these years many times upon different events of the VDI and AHK (https://www.ahkbrasilien.com.br/) in Sao Paulo, where Bernd since a couple of years is creating and realizing wonderful innovative Brazilian-German development projects, supported by and in close cooperation with German ministries and local German and Brazilian companies and institutions. 

Our traditional meeting place since many years is the rooftop bar in the spectacular building “Edificio Italia” (https://www.edificioitalia.com.br/), for which Bernd and I share our passion. It`s a quite famous, old, traditional and very fancy place, which gives You – through the glass walls all around the bar – a really exciting impression of Sao Paulo from above, especially on a clear day in the afternoon and during nightfall. This is a warmly recommendable place for doing a relaxing chill-out on a saturday or sunday afternoon. Try it out – once You find the opportunity and – please !!! – give me Your feedback. 

My first contact with Sao Paulo was clearly negative. I had arrived there in the middle of 1995, when I got started on my job as engineering & project manager for Henkel do Brasil at it`s chemical & adhesives production plant in Jacarei (today: BASF), about 1 hour by car away from Sao Paulo city, besides the Dutra highway, which connects Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. 

From my first visits to Sao Paulo on – during meetings with engineering companies and visits to equipment suppliers – I felt completely lost and desorientated in this huge ant hill like conglomerate of streets, buildings and masses of people. My experience with bigger cities until this time had been limited to sporadic visits to European metropoles like Paris, Rome, London and Madrid, which by far did not compare to Sao Paulo in many circumstances.

The two main reasons for me for not getting friends with Sao Paulo were clearly my incapacity to get a more or less reliable orientation there and the fact – as I feel it still today – that one and the same places there changes completely between day and night. Sao Paulo did really not easen it for me, to develop affection to it for quite long time. I practically made myself totally dependent during the first years on experienced “local guides” (colleagues, friends, business partners,…) for accompanying me during my visits to and activities in Sao Paulo. 

For sure this also had a lot to do with the welknown fact, that (not only) as a newcomer You need – the same like in most other bigger places all over Latin America and on other continents – to be quite careful when starting to move around in cities like Sao Paulo because of the crime risk there. To walk or drive into very poor quarters (favelas) might not be the best idea, but on the other hand to move (no matter whether during day or night) in very rich quarters does also require some precautions and knowledge and respect of some basic rules. 

Thanks God – and maybe some helpful instinct, experience and awareness – so far I never suffered any undesired situation, wherever I lived and moved, including Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and many other challenging places in Brazil, Mexico and several other countries in Latin America and Africa. What definitely has helped me a lot, is the huge experience which all my lots of friends, colleagues and business partners have shared with me. Nothing better than to learn from others instead of trying “to invent the wheel” by Yourself. 

Answering sincerely Your respective questions, I can calmly tell You, that I somehow have made peace with Sao Paulo about 10 years ago. This was the time, when I – due to my high professional and personal involvement – started to attend lots of different business and private events in Sao Paulo and when I started to go there quite frequently. 

To make it clear for You – my experience with and in Sao Paulo is still very much limited to certain areas and quarters and locations. I have by far not become familiar with Sao Paulo. Thanks to Waze and Google Maps, I anyhow don`t need to have more than a general orientation in this city for getting through to where I want to. But even with Waze and Google Maps I warmly recommend for everybody, to keep his eyes open and his brain attentative. Small errors can create big trouble here – like almost anywhere in the world, maybe here the size of the problems could just be a little bigger than at other places. 

What I can resume for You now is, that today I consider Sao Paulo a wonderful city, where You can easily find all kinds of restaurants, cultural and sports events, beautiful parks, museums, theaters and so on. Especially for people like me, who enjoy the luxury to be living just a hour away from downtown Sao Paulo on the calm and beautiful countryside. For those who live and work permanently in Sao Paulo the situation can be pretty different. Lot`s of my friends and business partners living in Sao Paulo suffer the terrible situation to which they are exposed almost permanently with regards to heavy traffic, criminality and several other negative circumstances more. 

But Brazilians are very familiar with all this and nothing expresses their wisdom better than the famous proverb of “the coin, which always has to different sides”, means that You will hardly find a place in the world, where there are only good, beautiful and pleasant circumstances. I personally meanwhile fully agree with this – and I clearly focuss on limiting my personal experiences with the kind of circumstances, which I prefer and keep as much distance as possible to all others. So far I have been quite successful with this strategy. 

Now I am really curious about the comments from all my readers and friends who live in Sao Paulo, knowing that several of them already seriously consider me a “traitor” because of my publicly outspoken real passion and affection for the “marvelous city” Rio de Janeiro, which – coming back to the above mentioned Brazilian proverb of “the two sides of the coin” – can definitely also be considered a real nightmare with regards to traffic, criminality, missing and/or bad basic infrastructure for great parts of the population etc. But that`s another story for one of my future posts here. 

To describe my feelings for Sao Paulo with a music play, nothing serves better than the classical Sao Paulo samba song “Trem das onze”, here played and sung by the important Sao Paulo samba band Demônios da Garoa:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZNw5WOQcus

Here`s what wikipedia knows about this band:

Demônios da Garoa is a Brazilian samba band. It was formed in São Paulo in 1943, its members drawing influences from a variety of cultural sources to develop their own characteristic style. In 1949, they met Adoniran Barbosa, one of the most important composers of “musica popular brasileira” or MPB. Together, they personified current socio-cultural trends. In 1994, it was recognized as the oldest performing group in Brazil by Guinness World Records.Today, “Demônios da Garoa” is one of the main samba bands in São Paulo and also one of the most respected musical groups in Brazil.

I hope (at least some of You) You found this sharing of my experiences with the city of Sao Paulo interesting. That`s good enough now for today. See You back here again in my blog upon the publication of next post. 

Enjoy the rest of this beautiful (at least here in Vinhedo/Sao Paulo/Brazil) sunday, fill up Your batteries and have a great start into the next week by tomorrow morning. 

 Good morning readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Time again for me to write to You. The subject of my todays post has come into my mind yesterday morning during a fone conversation with my friend Philipp Scherer, who is actively supporting us with technology scouting in Germany. 

As I have told You already in earlier posts, I have studied chemical engineering @ the German University of Karlsruhe, which today has become the KIT, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. And a couple of years ago I have been invited to join the KIT`s alumni Industry Expert Network (see also my post from July 4, 2020). 

Because of an interesting KIT technology development project, Josias Leal, our Development & Engineering Director, Marcel Moraes, our Development Manager, and I finally visited the KIT facilities in Karlsruhe exactly one year ago and made friends with the wonderful people there. 

This was when we met with Philipp for the first time. At that time he was finishing his job as Innovation Manager of the KIT and preparing for his new activities as entrepreneur (https://technologietransfer.org/). And it came pretty quickly clear for us, that we wanted to become his first clients. 

For deeper discussion of some interesting cooperation ideas we finally invited Philipp to visit us at our company in Itatiba, Sao Paulo. And upon his visit during December last year, we organized a “Open Technolgy Development Experience Exchange” event at our factory. 

As guests for our event we invited representants from the innovation department of the AHK Sao Paulo (https://www.ahkbrasilien.com.br/de/), the DWIH Brazil  (https://www.dwih-saopaulo.org/en/), the TU Munich (https://www.tum.de/en/) and our great friend Prof. Dr.-Ing. Klaus Schützer (http://www.unimep.br/scpm/pag_klaus.htm).

And – for sure – several colleagues from our DPPA department (see also my post from June 27, 2020) and some members of our Brain group (described in my post from August 6, 2020) participated together with Josias, Marcel and myself. 

The event was wonderful and we all had lots of fun and exchanged plenty of experiences related to the development, innovation and creativity subjects of our discussions. 

After a few days at our company Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil) we finally took Philipp to some of our key mining, steel, cement and sugar industry customers, where he could see lots of our couplings, brakes and backstops – which we had explained and shown to him earlier at our factory – “in situ” doing perfect service for our customers.

These customer visits were practically a “go & see” (see also my post from September 9, 2020) experience for Philipp and we all enjoyed it very much.

At the end of our joint activities upon Philipps first visit to Brazil, we took him to Rio de Janeiro, where we presented the engineering & sales team of our Brazilian marine division Vulkan Couplings at our office there to him.

 And finally we also visited the AHK Rio de Janeiro (https://brasilien.rio.ahk.de/pt/), where my friend Hanno Erwes, Managing Director of the AHK RJ, and his wonderful team of colaborators warmly received us. 

All these joint activities gave Philipp a very good and complete vision of what and how we are doing at our Brazilian company and he understood very well, which kind of support we were looking for in Germany.

Since then Philipp supports us with technology scouting within a service agreement, which we have signed with him after his visit to Brazil,  and – shortly before Covid-19 mixed up our original activity plans for 2020 – we had already some joint activities and meetings (both in Germany & online) regarding interesting technology developments @ German research and technology development institutions.

Actually we are currently colaborating upon concrete innovation projects with several German universities and we are also permanently exchanging ideas and experiences with similiar institutions and companies here in Brazil. 

If You were further interested in this, please feel free to participate in our presentations during next weeks spectacular annual VDI Sao Paulo event “12th Brazilian-German Engineering Day” (https://www.vdibrasil.com/eventos/12a-edicao-do-dia-da-engenharia-brasil-alemanha/). 

My colleagues Marcel and Josias will share our experiences with regards to our colaboration with German universities during the “Expert Talks” sessions and I will – together with several other Vulkan do Brasil management team colleagues – present our “Agile culture & Digital transformation” projects & experiences during the “Best Practices” session. 

But I can`t finish this post without mentionning the wonderful weekend, which I had spent together with Philipp at the “Marvellous City” Rio de Janeiro after our full week of activities and before he returned back home to Germany. 

We are all full of expectation now, that the Covid-19 crisis will hopefully come better under control next year and that we can re-take our active planning for further innovation & technology development meetings, visits and projects in Germany and in Brazil. 

As a nice fit to the just said, please enjoy this beautiful video version of Eric Clapton`s (here playing and singing together with Ed Sheeran) great song “I will be there”:

https://youtu.be/217xhAEdduc

Thank You very much for Your attention. I hope, that this sharing of experiences and information was interesting for You and – like always – I highly appreciate Your feedback and comments. 

Enjoy the remaining rest of the weekend and fill up Your batteries for next week`s agenda. See You back here again upon my next post. 

 Good afternoon all You readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Some of You already became concerned, whether I had disappeared here and abandoned my blog. Don´t worry – I just took the freedom to have a break of almost 2 weeks since I wrote my last post here. This was due to my extremely busy professional activities during this period and because of the fact, that I needed some “time out” for having fun with my familly and friends. 

As I told You in one of my first posts, the idea and decision to get started as blogger was a totally spontaneous one and when I wrote my first blog on June 18, I really did not have the least clue, how this – and if this –  would continue on the mid to long term. Initially I wrote daily posts. To be true, I kept doing this proudly until August 20, means during an uninterrupted period of 64 days. Not so bad, I think. 

But then came the moment where I became a little tired of writing daily posts and took the decision, to relax and to just write new posts, whenever I wanted to do it and when the circumstances of my professional & private life allowed me. And that`s exactly how I`m doing it since then. It was a very good decision and it allows me, to easen my daily agenda and reduce stress. 

You see – my way to approach new things is very much “learning by doing” and “trial & error” oriented. I love this style and it fully allows me to keep own total control of how it happens and – in the most cases – of what comes out finally.

Today I have been at our company & factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, once again for a couple of hours. Actually my colleagues Elisangela (Marketing & Sales Director of our Vulkan Couplings division), Marco (HR & Special Projects Director), Josias (Development & Engineering Director) and I had agended an online shooting session for our joint presentation movie for the upcoming (October 20 & 21, 2020) spectacular annual “12th Brazilian-German Engineering Day” organised by the VDI Brasil (https://www.vdibrasil.com/ ). The VDI (https://www.vdi.de/) is the meanwhile 160 years old German Engineers Association which actually has more than 145.000 members. Sao Paulo is one of the few places outside Germany, where a local branch of the VDI exists and organises events and activities for its members and the interested public, means companies and individuals. 

As You can see on the picture above, Elisangela, Marco, Josias and I had a lot of fun together this morning together (online) with the VDI Brasil team in Sao Paulo during the shooting session for our presentation movie. 

Since several years – and within the close colaboration and cooperation of our company with the VDI Brasil – Vulkan do Brasil sponsors this very exciting and highest content quality event and participates actively with presentations, booths, speaches etc. This year – as the event will happen 100% virtually online – we will participate with 2 presentation movies. 

The movie which we produced together with the fantastic VDI Brasil team today actually is a presentation with 4 different interview parts. And for sure Elisangela, Marco, Josias and I are the actors. During this presentation we will share some of our experiences which we altogether have made during the last 6 years during the complete transformation process of our company and our factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo. 

I won`t tell You too many secrets about this movie now. Better to keep this undisclosed until the event itself so that You – if You were interested – can watch and enjoy it there and then. But the key message derived from all our learnings during the 6 years long transformation process of our company Vulkan do Brasil sounds: If You really want to deeply transform Your company into a modern, agile, highly efficient, democratic, creative, flexible one – cultural change and the right people on all hierarchical levels and in all functional areas are essential for Your success. 

We will explain this more deeply during the presentation of our movie on ocasion of the “12th Brazilian-German Engineering Day” at Sao Paulo, Brazil, on October 20 & 21, 2020.

No other song would fit so beautifully to the message and subject of this post as “One love” from Bob Marley in this special version in support of UNICEF:

https://youtu.be/wXLumLvHWfA

Was this interesting for You? If yes – please let me know. And if not – please feel free to give me Your comments upon this post as well. I highly appreciate the open and active dialogue with the readers and followers of my posts and blog.

I wish You a great time and lots of further fun and success with all Your professional and private projects and activities until we meet again here in my blog upon publication of my next post, which I did not schedule concretely yet. 

 Good morning everybody here in my blog. Today is a very
important and really exciting day for me because exactly 6 years ago I started
my job as President of Vulkan do Brasil. 

In Germany we have a proverb saying,
that for Your anniversary You don`t need to invite guests, because all those, who are aware of it and want to congratulate You, will anyhow show up by
themselfes. In this sence I take the freedom to enjoy this beautiful day
working @ my home office in our house in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo. Even the wheather
here is bright today!

 It took me approximately five seconds, to look up on my
iphone, that September 17th, 2014, when I came to Vulkan do Brasil`s factory in
Itatiba in the beautiful and calm interior of the state of Sao Paulo for the first time, was a
wednesday. 

A few weeks before this I had come over with the owners of our
meanwhile more than 130 years old German – familly held in the 4th generation –
company, to start on my new job as President of the globally acting Vulkan
Group`s Brazilian subsidiary on January 1st, 2015. But due to certain urgencies, it became very important for Vulkan and for me, to speed this up. 

Fortunately
my former employer, the also globally acting Heat Exchangers division of the
German GEA Group, agreed to my proposal, to let me continue as Managing
Director of their Brazilian subsidiary in Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo, and
accepted, that I signed contract as the new President of Vulkan do Brasil,
working half a day for each of the two Brazilian companies as Managing Director from then on until
the end of 2014. This was a perfect win-win for both companies and for me. GEA found the necessary time for searching my successor, Vulkan had me available immediately and I could get started on the restructuring process at Vulkan do Brasil without anybody else getting involved locally.

And this was logistics wise very easy for me to accomplish, because during
this time I still lived in an appartment in the city of Jundiai, Sao Paulo,
exactly 30 minutes away – but in opposite directions – from both companies, GEA Heat Exchangers in Franco da Rocha and Vulkan do Brasil in Itatiba. Thus I could even enjoy lunch at home together with my familly. 

My decision, to leave GEA Heat Exchangers after almost 4
highly active and successful years, was due to the fact, that the GEA group had
just sold it`s worldwide heat exchangers division (56 production sites, 1.5
billion Euro turnover) to a private equity fund and I had my strong doubts with
respect to the future of our Brazilian plant, although 2014 – after several
years of negative results and a deep restructuring process – had been a
fantastic business year for us at Franco da Rocha. But at that time the whole Brazilian oil & gas industry was breaking together and our main customer Petrobras was deeply involved in massive corruption scandals which froze overnight their billionairy investment projects for the huge new refineries and petrochemical complexes under construction in Rio de Janeiro (Comperj) and Pernambuco (Suape).

 At Vulkan do Brasil in Itatiba new, big challenges knowingly
were waiting for me from the first moment over there on and I really appreciated this great opportunity, to rebuilt
this wonderful – meanwhile 45 years old – company, to set up a strong new
management team, to restructure the company completely and – always
together with my colleagues at our headquarters in Herne, Germany, and our
colleagues at all other globally distributed sister plants and sales
subsidiaries – to develop several new strategies for survival
and the generation of competitivity, sustainable growth and profitability of our company.

The 2 lower pictures show my presentation to our employees on September 17, 2014 and our new management team set up at Vulkan do Brasil until the end of 2014, the picture of our factory has been taken about 3 years ago after the final conclusion of the restructuring and on the upper picture appears our management team at the end of 2019. As You can see, most of our Directors continue the same as when we started back ago in September 2014.

 On that wednesday, September 17th, my American Vulkan
colleague Thomas Lehner, Global Production Director, had invited me to present
myself for the first time time to all the employees of Vulkan do Brasil. And for
sure all of them were curious to see and hear me for the first time. We had a
very nice event. Our employees were all standing on the yard in front of
our Lokring production building when Thomas presented me and when I directed
myself for the first time to all these wonderful people. 

The first day at a new
company is always naturally exciting for all involved and on that ocasion I gave my new colleagues and employees an overview of my career and management experiences at
different companies in Europe, Mexico and Brazil with the intention, to make
them relax a little bit and to create some initial trust, that I would
contribute strongly to finding good solutions for a better future of our
company during the obviously quickly upcoming very difficult political, economical and industrial crisis in Brazil. 

 After the speech to all employees I visited the factory and
all offices and I held my first meeting with the directors of all departments
for presenting each other personally and for a first quick discussion about the general situation of the company and the challenges, which we were facing at that moment. 

When I arrived at home in the evening,
I had a very good initial idea of our company and its situation and I was very
happy, that – no matter all obviously and abundantly existing challenges –
there obviously were so many highly qualified, experienced and motivated
employees on all different organisation levels. 

My initial sensation and
conviction was, that this company was just another juwel, which – once polished
strongly – would develop bright brilliance, which in the end after 3 very hard
years finally came true and which makes all of us at Vulkan do Brasil so much happy
and proud today.

Originally I wanted to spend this day in our factory in
Itatiba, but – because of my today`s agenda full with consecutive national and
international conferences and online events – I finally decided, to better stay
at home in our house in Vinhedo today and to work from out of my home office.
But next monday I`ll meet some of my colleagues at our company and I`ll definitely have my next
visit to our beautiful factory there.

Have a great day full with lots of fun and success. See You back here again in my block for my next post during the next week. 

 Hi everybody. Good to meet again with You here in my blog after exactly 1 week. Normally I would consider a week as a hell of a time span but ultimately things have dramatically changed and the clock runs much faster than before. At least that`s my sensation. Very much due to the non-stop participation in conferences and all types of exciting online events with people from all over the world. 

Since the middle of March, from the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis here in Brazil on, I have been working from out of my home office in our house in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo. And this has been functionning wonderfully since then for my own full initial surprise. During the 4 months from March until July I have only been 3 or 4 times for 2 or 3 hours each to our beautiful factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, for having a look how things were going there, for “showing my flag” to our employees and for fetching or signing and dropping some documents in my office. 

About 1 month ago my management team colleagues Luis Traúzola, Vice President Admin, Ferdinand Senske, Vice President Operations, Marco Santos, HR & Special Projects Director, and I have started to meet 1 day every week physically at our company. And I must admit, that I really enjoy these wonderful opportunities to meet with my colleagues, to visit personally all areas and departments of our factory and to talk to many of our employees. 

Maybe this sounds crazy for You, but since I made my first experience as Managing Director for a company, which was producing products which I could individually see, identify and touch, I identify myself very much with these. During my times at Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s factories in Germany and Spain our products were tubes, jars, flasks and bottles of cosmetic products, during my times at the autoparts suppliers ElringKlinger and BOS in Mexico our products were motor gaskets, heat shields, arm rests and luggage covers, during my time at Oystar/Fabrimar in Guarulhos, Sao Paulo, our products were packaging machines for the pharmaceutical industry, during my times at GEA at Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo, our products were all kinds of heat exchangers for mainly the oil & gas industry and since I started at Vulkan in Itatiba meanwhile 6 years ago, our products are couplings, brakes, backstops and Lokring tube connectors and accessories. 

I`m not just amazed by seeing our wonderful products beeing designed and manufactured – it`s equally exciting for me to see our products installed and functioning at our customers in all their different processes and machinery. During my times at Schwarzkopf & Henkel, where we did not produce B2B products but B2C products, I was always looking up our own and our competitors products in the shelfs of the supermarkets. It gave me an almost conspiratory and highly satifying feeling, when I deciphered the bar codes on our own products and thus got to know, at which production plant, on which day and on which production line they had been manufactured. Full personal identification with the job, the employees, the products and the customers is fundamental in my eyes for people who have been awarded general management responsabilities and must show performance and results under all types of circumstances.

During my in total 6 years of experience as Managing Director at the autoports manufacturers in Mexico, I have learned a lot about the processes and management philosophies which have become predominant in this industry. My real “teachers” during this period were the guys from Toyota. During numerous launches and PPAPs of new products, I became quite familiarized with Toyota`s world famous “production system” and lean philosophies.

After all, the Toyota principle Genchi Genbutsu (= Go & See) is the one, which has impressed and influenced me the most. Let`s ask wikipedia for helping us, to understand a little more about Go & See:

Genchi Genbutsu literally translates “real location”, “real thing” and it is a key principle of the Toyota Production System. It suggests that in order to truly understand a situation one needs to observe what is happening at the site where work actually takes place: the genba. It is “collecting facts and data at the actual site of the work or problem”. The only way to truly understand what happens on the shop floor is to go there. It is where the value is beeing added and where the waste can be observed. Go & See is therefore a key approach in problem-solving. If the problem exists on the shop floor, then it needs to be understood and solved at the shop floor.

Since my times in Mexico during 2003-2009 I have deeply internalised this understanding and made it part of my normal management routine. Nothing better, than to see and understand all kinds of challenging situations with Your own eyes and exactly at the places, where they are happening. 

With this orientation and conviction, I always have a complete and extensive tour through all areas and departments of our factory when I go there. I normally invite Ferdinand Senske, our Vice President Operations, or other management team colleagues to accompany me during these walks. And whatever appears and does not explain or arises questions or even critics is beeing mentioned, discussed and generates decisions for actions to be taken afterwards. Thus these factory tours are very helpful and productive for all of us. 

Upon my last week`s visit to our factory I visited in detail our Test Center area, where we have installed during the last years several test benches and other devices for testing, measuring and analysis of our couplings, brakes and backstops. This area has been created almost 6 years ago when we started with the development of new products at our company in Itatiba. Josias Leal, Development and Engineering Director (josias.leal@vulkan.com; +55 11 98571 2107) and Marcel Moraes, Development Manager  (marcel.moraes@vulkan.com; +55 11 97335 3875), are responsible for our DPPA (Development of Products, Processes and Applications) department and also for our Test Center. Our highly experienced and qualified colleague Robson Matiello, Testing Engineer, is the area responsible for our Test Center and accompanies all activities full time there. 

I am always highly satisfied and proud, to see all areas of our beautiful factory very clean and well organised. This does not only proof that all systems and processes which we have implemented there continuously during the last years are beeing efficiently and with a very high discipline used, but it also reflects the high identification and motivation of all our Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil) employees. 

On monday next week I`ll have my next factory tour and I will select another area there for a more detailed visit and for presenting to You. 

I hope the sharing of these personal & professional insights and experiences was interesting for You and anyhow I wish You a successful week and lots of good health and fun.

Looking forward to meeting with You here in my blog again by next tuesday. 

Good morning faithful readers of my posts and followers of my blog. I just decided, that today has to become another “post day” for me in my blog and I will be sharing right now with You some experiences with the VDI Brasil (https://www.vdibrasil.com/) and our participation in its wonderful events.

The VDI is the German Association of Engineers (https://www.vdi.de/en/home). It was founded 160 years ago and today it has 145.000 members, all engineers. 

I joined the VDI during my time as student of Chemical Engineering at the University of Karlsruhe (today: KIT – Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) back in the early 80`s. The membership for students was very cheap and as a VDI member I received the very interesting and informative newspaper „VDI Nachrichten“ (“VDI News”), which I since then like to read every week. But today for sure I read the digital version on my tablet. 

After my return to Brazil from Mexico at the end of 2009 I met with Bernd Mayer, who at that time was the General Manager of the VDI Brasil, upon an event of the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce (AHK) and we made immediately friends. From then on I frequented the events of the VDI Brasil in Sao Paulo and I started to participate actively there. During Bernd`s time as Managing Director of the VDI Brasil, Edgar Horny, the former President of Voith Brasil, was the President of the VDI Brasil.  

After having taken over new responsabilities as Managing Director of GEA Heat Exchangers (today: Kelvion) I started to invite my Brazilian management team colleagues to the VDI Brasil events and in 2012 we participated for the first time with our company in the big and beautiful „Brazilian-German Engineering Day“ event, which is beeing held once per year in Sao Paulo and which has become the VDI Brasil‘s biggest and most spectacular annual event, always with lots of participants and several guest speakers from Germany. Upon the “7th Brazilian-German Engineering Day” event in October 2015 in Sao Paulo my German colleague Dr. Gunnar Goedecke, Global Innovation Director of the Vulkan Group, held a exciting speach about “The secret of innovation”.  

When Bernd took over new responsabilities in the AHK Sao Paulo at the end of 2013, I made friends with his successor Matthias Neisser and from then on Matthias and I developped several very nice joint activities between the VDI Brasil and our company Vulkan do Brasil – including public in-house events at our factory in Itatiba, where I had taken over as President in September 2014. At that time Wilson Bricio, President South America Region of ZF, took over as the new President of the VDI Brasil and promoted a complete face lift and general modernization of the VDI Brasil with stronger and more clear focus on technologies for the future like Industry 4.0 and the digital transformation.

And since Johannes Klingberg became the new Managing Director of the VDI Brasil in 2016, Vulkan do Brasil has ongoingly participated actively in many events of the VDI Brasil and has become one of the sponsors of the main annual “Brazilian-German Engineering Day“ events in Sao Paulo, where we always participate with our whole management team. 

Since July 2018 Mauricio Muramoto, President of the Brazilian Association of the Autoparts Suppliers (Sindipeças/Abipeças) has become the new President of the VDI Brasil. Mauricio and I know each other from former joint activities and events in Sao Paulo and it was a great honour for us, to receive Mauricio and his wife as special guests upon ocasion of the marvelous 45th Anniversay party of Vulkan do Brasil during October 4th, 2019 at our beautiful factory in Itatiba. 

For us as developpers and manufacturers of highly engineered products and as specialists for industrial mechanical power transmission applications for many different industries like mining, steel, cement & construction materials, sugar & ethanol, pulp & paper, oil & gas, energy generation incl. renewables, ports, automotive and many others, the active participation in the technical events of the VDI Brasil has become a clear must.

We are constantly seeking the open confrontation with new technologies and tendencies in order to accompany the development tendencies of the industry and in order to make sure, that we always provide the latest state-of-the-art technologies for our customers. 

And – last not least – we are a engineering & technology company. Almost 40 of the 200 Brazilian employees of Vulkan do Brasil are certified engineers or are in the process of becoming certified. This shows clearly our extremely high technical focus, orientation and qualification. And – I cannot hide this from showing openly to You – this makes us enormously proud. 

I hope I have called Your interest with this short description of our active colaboration with the German Engineers Association VDI Brasil in Sao Paulo and it would make me even more happy, if some of You showed own interest and contacted Johannes and his wonderful team (https://www.vdibrasil.com/) for more information and invitation for participation in some of the next events.  

Have a great and successful day and let`s meet here in my blog again in a couple of days. Take care !

 Good morning everybody here in my blog. I´m back again this morning after the pause of several days with a new post – this time about our active participation in the events and activities of the VDMA Brasil. 

First of all I must inform You about my decision, to give up my – admittedly quite laborious – practice of daily posts. Following my own management philosophy of  “You`re the boss” (see description in my earlier post: https://klausfhepp.blogspot.com/2020/07/youre-boss-very-effective-management.html), I took the decision and liberty, to switch over from daily posts to from now on weekly posts. Anyhow my blog has been firmly established since I have started it on June18 and nothing and nobody prohibits for me, to do more often posts again whenever I want it and whenever this makes sence for me. 

Now let`s talk about the VDMA. The VDMA (https://www.vdma.org/en/) is the German Mechanical Engineering Industry Association. It represents more than 3.300 member companies – most of them small and medium-sized enterprises – in Germany and Europe – one of them our Herne, Germany, based  Vulkan Group (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding).

As Brazilian subsidiary of the German Vulkan Group, our company Vulkan do Brasil ( https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil) is automatically registered as member company at the Brazilian VDMA Liasion Office VDMA (https://brazil.vdma.org/pt/ueber-uns), which has its office in the industrial metropolis Sao Paulo and is beeing managed outstandingly by Thomas Junqueira Ayres Ulbrich together with his small team.

I have met Thomas Ulbrich for the first time at the end of 2014, just after having taken over new responsabilities as President of Vulkan do Brasil in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, on ocasion of an event of the German-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce and Industry AHK (https://www.ahkbrasilien.com.br/) in Sao Paulo. And since then I have – very often together with colleagues from our Vulkan do Brasil management team – participated in the major events and in many other activities of the VDMA Brasil. 

The events of the VDMA Brasil are wonderful platforms for exchange and debate of generally interesting and important information about industry, economy and market developments between the associated companies and also offer excelent opportunities for networking, quite often under participation of VDMA managers and specialists from Germany and different influential external Brazilian speakers from industry, economy and politics.

By the way Mr. Michael Teschner, Managing Director of Multivac Brasil, the President of the VDMA Brasil, had been my predecessor at Fabrima Maquinas Automáticas/Oystar in Guarulhos, Sao Paulo, where I had taken over as Managing Director in September 2010. 

This shows again that the  world has become quite small and expecially here in Brazil (like in any other foreign country – seen from a German perspective) it is very easy and common for industry and business managers to know many others from their own home country, which easens tremendously the exchange of information and creates supportive contact and communication networks (see also my earlier post: https://klausfhepp.blogspot.com/2020/08/it-makes-hell-of-fun-to-belong-to.html).

Above on the left picture You can see Mr. Ulbrich during yesterday`s first online Brazilian VDMA Management Meeting (special guests: José Veloso, Managing Director of ABIMAQ, Ulrich Ackermann, VDMA Frankfurt, Thomas Kaeser, Chairman of Kaeser Kompressoren SE, Coburg). On the picture in the upper right corner I am together with my friend Christoph Danner, VDMA Construction & Mining Latin Amerika, Frankfurt, on the pictures below in the middle Messrs. Ulbrich and Michael Teschner and on the picture in the lower right corner Mr. Ulbrich as special guest at Vulkan do Brasil`s 45th Anniversary party end of 2019 in Itatiba, Sao Paulo.

With my friend Christoph Danner, who is very actively representing the VDMA Construction & Mining section all over Latin America, I meet normally several times “during normal years” at the mining exhibitions in Chile, Peru and other Latin American countries, where we usually expose the industrial products (all types of couplings, brakes and backstops for all kinds of industrial mechanical power transmission applications) of our Vulkan Drive Tech division (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/drivetech). And we also usually meet at the major mining industry and technology events in Germany. 

I hope that this was interesting for You. In future other posts I will share some of our very interesting experiences with the participation in global VDMA Mining activities and in other regional and sectorial VDMA events.

See You – most propably next week – again here in my blog for my next post. I wish You a very successful day.