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 Good morning my dear readers and followers of my blog. Today I decided to publish my post earlier than during the last days and the subject for today was very easy for me to choose.

As I have participated together with my Brazilian management team colleague and great friend Mauro Mendonça (mauro.mendonca@vulkan.com, +55 11 98644 1270), Sales Director South America for the Vulkan Lokring (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/lokring) division of Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil), in our yesterday`s global Vulkan Lokring conference, the decision came very easily into my head, to present Mauro personally to all of You today. 

When I joined Vulkan do Brasil as President back in September 2014, Mauro had just accomplished his first year as Sales Director for our Brazilian Lokring division. Before this he had been responsible during several years for the sales of our industrial division Vulkan Drive Tech in Brazil. 

Because of his highly experienced background in the refrigeration industry, he was offered the position as Sales Director for Lokring South America when his predecessor left our company. 

And since then Mauro and his wonderful team of colaborators have done an impressive job with the introduction of our Lokring products to many different industrial applications in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia and the successful extension of our Lokring product portfolio in Brazil.

One of the really big advantages of our Lokring system for connecting pipes is the solder and brazing free installation, which makes it completely free of any open flames and fumes. This gives the users of the Lokring system, a tremendous advantage with regards to safety of the installations, health of the employees and general environmental friendliness. 

But there are many more technical advantages, which our recognized and prestigious customers in many different branches of the refrigeration industry all over South America appreciate and enjoy. 

Our Lokring system is capable and worldwide exhaustively prooven as well for volume operations in series production of refrigerators, freezers and air conditioning systems at OEMs as also for almost individual, project determined utilisation in “tailor made” VRF and many other refrigeration installations, like data centers, banks, museums, hospitals, universities, hotels etc. 

Complimentary to our Lokring system, which we almost completely manufacture  – fully following the global corporate quality standards of the Vulkan Group – at our factory in Itatiba, Vulkan do Brasil also offers a wide portfolio of premium accessory products for installation & repair service providers and technicians in the Brazilian refrigeration industry like f.e. vacuum pumps, leak detectors, devices for the extraction of the refrigerant fluids and evacuation of the refrigeration systems, manifolds and many more tools and devices. 

But we do not just sell components. Mauro and his team members are extremely experienced and skilled with regards to all these technologies and applications and offer – in-house at our factory in Itatiba but also at the facilities of our customers and at specialized refrigeration and climatization schools – trainings and presentations of our full portfolio of Lokring products and their correct utilisation and installation. 

Since we transferred our Lokring production from the former facility in Barueri, Sao Paulo, to our todays one and only factory in Itatiba during 2014, our Lokring devision has been fully integrated into Vulkan do Brasil and makes an integral part of our business. 

During 2015 and 2016 we have made several important investments in new technology at our factory in Itatiba and we have completely optimized all manufacturing and manufacturing support processes during several Lean projects. Actually we started our Lean program at Itatiba in October 2014 in our Lokring production and due to the great success and results we extended this during 2015 to all our other factory areas.

We are very proud to have the Lokring production for all South America firmly established at our factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, and we are constantly exchanging our KPI`s and doing benchmarking with our Vulkan Group sister factories in Herne/Germany, Pune/India, Wuxi/China and Orlando/USA, where our colleagues also produce Lokring products for their local and regional customers. 

Somehow it would not be wrong, if I said that the global manufacturing & distribution footprint of the Vulkan Group`s Lokring division has been set up “Covid-19 proof”. And actually – as one of the consequences of the terrible Covid-19 crisis and the interruption of lots of global supply chains – so called “triad strategies” with concepts for regionally distributed manufacturing sites and less global, long distance logistics have become state-of-the-art in today`s management consulting business. 

Due to the totally different products, applications and business cultures of our 3 different divisions, we have a very wide range of cultural and business experiences within our Brazilian management team, where Mauro powerfully represents our Lokring business and firmly contributes to our company success. 

I really love to have such a variety of different products, applications, customers, cultures and managers within the scope of our business. This is real diversity and keeps us energized day and night. 

Please – in general – feel free to contact directly Mauro or me, in case You want to know more about our Lokring business in South America or have any other questions about us and our company. 

That`s it for today. See You – hopefully – again back here in my blog tomorrow. 

 Good afternoon all my readers and followers. I am late with my today`s post because I participated all morning today in an international online conference with Vulkan Lokring (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/lokring) colleagues from Germany, Italy, US and some of my brazilian team members. 

We had a great 4 hours long exchange and discussion of experiences and we defined altogether some new strategic development projects for our group. 

Before this conference with our North American colleagues and us South Americans, our European colleagues had already earlier today held the same conference with our Vulkan Lokring colleagues in China and India. 

Thus in the end all experiences of our worldwide Vulkan Lokring development, engineering, manufacturing, distribution and sales organisation came together. That`s clearly the big advantage of an agile organisation like ours. We are big enough to really globally attend our customers on all continents, but we are at the same time still small enough, to keep processes lean and fast and to let all global key players of all different disciplines participate actively in all relevant events and decisions.

And it is funny, because this fits nicely to an article in a german newspaper, which I read this morning. Several highly successful business people answered the question there, which had been the major factors for their successful careers. One of the concordant conclusions of all interview partners was, that the unplanned, sudden coincidence of favorable circumstances were almost always decisive for success and happiness. 

But the coincidence of favorable circumstances alone is definitely not enough for guaranteed success. Like always in live, there are several important factors more. Success and happiness are definitely also a question of readiness, preparation, analytic capacity and speed of decision taking. 

I would rather say, that preparation – means the combination of know how and experience – and analytical capacity are the 2 sides of one coin. One without the other doesn`t match. And in the same way I see readiness and the ability for taking quick – but right! – decisions as the 2 sides of the other coin. 

Many people I have met were perfectly prepared, educated, experienced, had enormous know how, but were not analytically strong enough for detecting opportunities for successful projects. And several others did not make themselfes available (= ready) for doing certain things, no matter their desperation for taking quick decisions. 

We all know these typical cases from our professional and private life experiences and I am sure, that You all know lots of colleagues or team members, who suffer from these weaknesses. But this is exactly my point for saying, that a good team of different, multi experienced, multidisciplinary people can overcome all such difficulties by joining and using the particular strengths of the individual single team members.

That`s how we practice it in our daily work and how we did today during our international Vulkan Lokring conference and – by the way – in a nicely, harmonically working familly (like mine) You normally apply the same – not outspoken or formalized – rules. 

Looking forward to Your comments upon this short insight in my today`s agenda and philosophy.

See You back here in my blog again tomorrow. 

 Hi all You readers of my posts. Good news first. Actually I can tell You 3 things today, which I consider very good and highly welcome.

First of all the government of the State of Sao Paulo, where I live and where our beautiful factory is located, has published numbers, which show for the first time since the beginning of the actual Covid-19 pandemia in Brazil a strong reduction of the occupation of the intensive care beds in the hospitals all over our state and also a strong decline of the death rates in the State of Sao Paulo. But we need to be very cautious with the interpretation of these numbers. Covid-19 is a hellish tricky subject and there is definitely no reason for opening champaign bottles in Sao Paulo yet. 

The second good news is, that obviously – according to Oxford Economics – at least the economies in Mexico, Brazil and Peru are picking up again strongly from the setback because of Covid-19, whilst Columbia, Chile and Argentina still continue with reduced economic activities. But – the same as above – this has also to be watched very carefully and without exaggerated optimism. 

And the third good news today is, that it has just been raining where I am living for almost the first time since about 5 months. It`s not that I don`t like dry, sunny days. But the plants in our garden needed urgently some rain and we had a lot of wild fires during the last weeks along the highways and in the green areas in our region.

Having informed You about these 3 good news, I can dedicate now my full attention to continue my yesterday started experience sharing about my travel to Cape Verde. 

As already mentioned I was accomodated in a small, simple but nice, clean and safe hotel in the city Mindelo on the Cape Verdean island Sao Vincente. Beside my 3 months students internship in South Africa during the 80`s, this was actually my first time in an African country. 

One of my first learnings in Mindelo was, that my own biological clock did not work there. Because the local people there were mainly active from 6am to 10am, when I normally was still sleeping or having breakfast and reading newspapers. 

When I used to start activities and go out on the streets, most people – because of the strong heat – had just disappeared and the streets remained almost empty until 5pm, when it soon after started to darken very quickly. 

This was a real challenge, because on one hand I was travelling alone and on the other hand this was – at least during that time still – not a place frequented by many tourists. Thus I had serious difficulties to “kill” the time during the long days. Only a few restaurants were open for lunch and anyhow there were hardly other guests. 

Another problem was, that – against my normal habbits – I had decided to travel to Cape Verde with my Portuguese-Spanish dictionary as the only book in my, anyhow very limited, luggage. And – believe it or not – I could not find any newspapers or books in the few shops there. I think, the only book available for purchase was the Holy Bible, which was not exactly the kind of literature, which I was mainly looking after. 

The only printed material usable for reading which I could find in Mindelo were some quite old and already massively used french newspapers. I discovered these in a French cultural center – let`s be true, it was just a scarcely furnitured room with some old yellowed posters on the walls. 

After nightfall, which started around 6pm, the local people appeared again on the roads, this time in masses. And lots of economical and social activities started. And to meet other people in the restaurants during dinner was much more easy because many famillies and groups of friends came there. 

As the main reason for my travel to Mindelo had been my interest in the beautiful Cape Verdean music, I started to ask several people for indications of the “good” bars, where live music should be presented. But this was quite easy. There were practically only 3 or 4 bars in Mindelo, where this could happen. And I looked them all up during the first nights of my stay there. 

But this became another challenge. Because it was extremely difficult, to figure out information about live music presentations. There was no fix programme. Normally these bars were quite empty. But this could change from one moment to the other and crowds of people fell in. Especially on friday and saturday night.

What I found out was, that You really needed to follow the rumors of the people, although it was never clear, whether these were fundamented or just invented. That was exactly how I – after several unsuccessful nights – had the enormous luck, to assist a totally improvised live show of the great Cape Verdean singer and musician (he plays mainly guitar and bass, but also piano) Tito Paris. 

Tito Paris has been born in Mindelo, but as a young man he had emigrated to Lisbon, Portugal, where he still mainly lives. During his youth he played together with his brothers and his cousin Bau (Rufino Almeida), who has also become very famous as musician later-on. He has toured numerous nations including Portugal, Spain, France (especially Cannes), US (New York, Boston), Canada, England, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway. 

In 2012 he celebrated 30 years of his career with a huge concert in Rotterdam together with the Metropolitan Orchestra of the Netherlands. On April 8, 2017 he was awarded the rank of Commander of the Portuguese Order of Merit by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. And – especially interesting for my Brazilian readers – his album titled “Mim ê Bô” features the special presentation of the former “King of Morna” Bana (also a famous Cape Verdean singer) and the Brazilian musician Zeca Baleiro. 

Actually people were telling me since a couple of days, that “on friday evening” Tito Paris would play in one of the bars. But nobody had an idea in which of them and at which hour. But no problem. Just another challenge. Thus I oscillated between the different bars for several hours looking up what was happening there. But nothing indicated that anything really special would happen. In each of the bars a handful of people only. Around midnight some more people showed up, but still no real movement. 

And then around 2am at one certain moment the people were standing up, clapping their hands and jubilating loudly. Tito Paris had entered the bar together with two or three others. His guitar hung over his shoulders. No other instruments, musicians, equipments – nothing. 

This started to become my first real “pocket show”. I doubt that there had been more than 50 people in this bar, when Tito Paris started playing. For sure, during the next 2 hours lots more of people dropped in. But it was extremely impressive. Because immediately many other guests conjured some real and improvised intruments and altogether accompanied Tito Paris playing and singing. This was like a familly party. And everybody knew each of the songs. Nothing formal, distant, serious. Unbelievable for me, that such a quite famous artist with international reputation could act in such absolute normality and harmony with the people surrounding him. 

I had a wonderful evening – better: night – and was very glad, that I had been able to realise this so unconcrete and unlikely dream. This has become one of these moments, which I will never ever forget in my live.

Here as an example the video version of his song “Mim Ê Bô”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LPdvCyERDw

And as another sample of Tito`s music a live concert version of his beautiful song “Ña Pretinha”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIsicP4k1ZE

You can only love this music or hate it – there is hardly any option between these two extremes available. 

I`d be curious to receive Your feedback. Let`s meet here in my blog again tomorrow. Enjoy the 2nd half of this wonderful weekend.

 Good morning everybody. Good news first! Today is the first half of this new wonderful weekend and I hope You are enjoying it as well, wherevever You are right now. 

I am comfortably lying on the sofa in our beautiful garden and reading some newspapers. As already mentioned in an earlier post, I have completely disabandoned reading printed newspapers and switched my subscriptions over to purely digital ones. And – besides beeing much cheaper and generating much less trash – I really got used to it and started to love it. 

The music playlist I am listening right now in the background to my reading has just been playing the song “Sodade” from the late Cape Verdian singer and songwriter Cesaria Évora, which I really adore deeply. And this brought me to the idea, to share my travel experiences to Cape Verde with You.

At the end of 1998 I arrived back to Germany from Brazil, where I had been living and working for 3 years as Project Manager and Engineering Department Manager at Henkel`s Chemical plant (which now belongs to BASF) in Jacarei, Sao Paulo. 

During 1999 I was Technical Director at Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s big cosmetics plant in Viersen-Dülken, Germany, where we produced huge quantities of Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s hair colorants and many other fancy products. 

At the beginning of 2000 I moved to La Coruña, Spain, where I took over new responsabilities as Plant Manager of Schwarzkopf & Henkel`s freshly aquired (from Gilette) famous “La Toja” cosmetics plant and where I stayed until mid 2003, when I decided to quit at Henkel after 16 years and look for new growth and experience opportunities as Managing Director of ElringKlinger, a German automotive parts supplier company, in Toluca, Mexico. 

During the time living and working in La Coruña, I spent a wonderful summer weekend in the beautiful city Bonn, which had been Germany`s capital since the end of World War II until 1990, when Berlin – after the fall of the wall and the German reunification – took over oficially this role again.

In Bonn I participated in a wonderful “Lusafrica” open air concert with tremendous live shows of several quite important and wellknown musicians and bands from Portugal, Brazil and the portuguese speaking African countries Moçambique, Angola and Cape Verde.  

Lusafrica (full name: Productions Lusafrica) is an independent record label company based in Paris, France. The company was founded in 1988 by José da Silva and it was the first multinational record company opened in Cape Verde.

One of the absolute super stars of the open air concert in Bonn was Cesaria Évora, the famous singer and songwriter from Cape Verde. I knew and loved her music already, but this was the first – and unfortunately only – ocasion, where I had the pleasure, to see and hear her singing in a live show. 

Back home to La Coruña, Spain, again, the strong wish, to travel once to Cape Verde and to get personally familiar with the home country of Cesaria Évora and so many other important “world music” musicians, was firmly born in my head. 

And finally in February 2002 I travelled there for 2 weeks of holidays. Before I share my experiences from this travel with You, I would like to give You – because most propably not all of You have heard much about this country so far – some general background information (with great help from wikipedia) about Cape Verde. 

Cape Verde is an island country in the central Atlantic Ocean. The group of in total 10 islands lies about 650 km west of the West African city Dakar, Senegal, with Praia as it`s capital located on Santiago island. 

The archiepelago remained uninhabited until the 15th century, when portuguese explorers arrived there and colonized the island group, establishing thus the first european settlement in the tropics. 

The islands grew prosperous throughout the 16th and 17th century, when Cape Verde became ideally located for the very sad Atlantic slave-trade and attracted lots of merchants, privateers and pirates.

The supression of the Atlantic slave-trade finally in the 19th century led to quick economic decline and massive emigration. 

Later-on Cape Verde gradually recovered as an important commercial stopover for shipping routes. Incorporated as an overseas department of Portugal in 1951, the islands continued to campaign for independence, which they finally achieved in 1975, after the “Revolution of the Carnations” in Portugal and the fall of the portuguese dictator Salazar. 

Since the early 1990s Cape Verde has operated as a stable representative democracy and remains one of the most-developped and democratic countries in Africa. 

Lacking natural resources, its developing economy is mostly service-oriented, with a growing focus on tourism and foreign investment. Cape Verde has approximately 550.000 inhabitants today. Official languages are Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole.

But today more Cape Verdeans live abroad (nearly 1 million) with significant emigrant communities in the US, Portugal, Angola, Senegal, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, France, Italy and Scandinavia.  

When I planned my trip to Cape Verde, it was clear from the very beginning, that I would not want to spent a single minute nor a single Cent in one of the tourists complexes concentrated in the surroundings of Cape Verde`s capital Praia on the island Santiago, where also the only international airport of Cape Verde for the same reason was located. 

My travel led me from La Coruña, Spain, to Madrid and from there to Praia, Cape Verde, and from there further with a small plane together with only a handful other individual travellers to the quite distant Cape Verdean island Sao Vincente, where I had made reservation of a room in a small, simple hotel in this island`s capital Mindelo. 

Mindelo is a port town which has about 70.000 inhabitants and which had always had the fame, to be the music and – at that time totally non-touristic, local, authentic – nightlife center of the Cape Verdean islands, where all the famous Cape Verdean musicians still played live – or had played in the past – like Cesaria Évora, Tito Paris, Bau (Rufino Almeida), Ildo Lobo, Teófilo Chantre, Herminia (da Cruz Fortes) and many others less known internationally, from time to time – and mostly for absolute surprise and without any public pre-announcement –  in the handful of bars at night.

On the above foto collage from my travel to Cape Verde during 2002 You can see some impressions of typical situations in Mindelo and the landscape around the city. 

And as a first taste of the beautiful Cape Verdean “Morna” music, I share this wonderful video of my most beloved song “Sodade” (Brazilian: saudade = home-sickness, desire, yearning, longing,…. in German: Sehnsucht; a culturally extremely important term for us in Brazil as well, which I will explain seperately in more details in a future post here in my blog)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku_WZoTtT8Q

And here one more very beautiful video with the song “Petit pais”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeLUGn7qYP8

I hope that this sharing of some general information about the Cape Verdean islands and my motivation, to travel there, called Your interested attention and created some curiosity about what I will share with You in one of my future posts here in this blog. 

I`d love to receive feedback from all amongst my readers, who have also already had the opportunity, to travel to Cape Verde and to get to know their own experiences.

Enough for today now. I`ll go straight to our fridge and get me a can of ice cold Brazilian “Original” beer. You know already my motto: “After action – satisfaction”. 

Enjoy the weekend. See You back here again tomorrow. 

 Hi all You faithful readers of my post. During this week I have participated in several online conferences with colleagues at our Vulkan Group (https://www.vulkan.com/pt-br/holding) corporate headquarters in Herne, Germany. And this brought me to the idea, to share some reflections with You. 

Since almost 25 years I have – in different general management functions for different German industrial companies – been responsible for our business and operations at the different places in the different countries, where I have been living.

When I started this career far away from Germany almost 25 years ago, the main limitation for close contact with our German headquarters and other global sister companies had mainly been the difficult communication and the poor technical means for transmission of technical data and documents.

This changed a lot with the appearance of the internet, email and smart communication devices and today – as we altogether have just experienced widely during the outbreak of the current Covid-19 crisis – is no issue at all any longer. 

My Brazilian management team colleagues and many employees at our company use frequently todays`s online conference tools and we all have made the experience, that – totally contrary to how this was in the past – today`s major challenge is not the lack of information and communication but the abundance of these. 

Related to all this and due to the fantastic communication devices and technologies which everybody has on hand nowadays, the velocity of communication and decision processes has increased tremendously and we all are practically reachable non-stop through the whole week including the weekend and all public or private holidays day and night. 

But for me and my live & work balance this is really wonderful and I am not complaining at all about these new circumstances, about which so many people complain. As already exposed in an earlier post about my experiences with the “Times Square Effect” (https://klausfhepp.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-times-square-effect-definitely.html), I do not feel overwhelmed by the flood of quick information, which endlessly reaches me and I also keep secure control of my reachability and availability. 

Just as an example – when at home in our house one of the many telefones rings, almost all other familly members – with my lovely wife in the first line – almost go crazy to attend it. I don`t. Let the phone ring. I`m the boss, not the fone. As the french say beautifully “le roy, c`èst moi”. 

With all this mentioned, I come back to what I started to share at the beginning of my post. Normally during the last more than 20 years – always working far away from Germany for German companies – I have been visiting our corporate headquarters (Henkel: Düsseldorf, ElringKlinger: Dettingen/Stuttgart region, BOS: Ostfildern/Stuttgart region, GEA Heat Exchangers: Bochum, Vulkan: Herne) at least 2-3 times every year for participation in business meetings and workshops. 

Now it looks like this year – due to the Covid-19 circumstances-  would become the first year since I left Germany long time ago, in which I will not travel to our headquarters and to Germany in general for a complete year long.

Even if this was really the case, it would definitely not “kill” me or have any measurable negative effect on my activities and performance because with the help of the above mentioned modern technical means we keep our communication between us and our headquarters as well as with all other worldwide Vulkan Group subsidiaries going on uninterruptedly. 

This might at first glance sound crazy, but my sensation is, that due to the terrible travel restrictions our communication over long distance without physical meetings has even become more intensive than before. It would be interesting for me, to hear about Your own experiences with this. Maybe this is a even more wide spread general experience. 

The above shown pictures remember me of my last visit to our beautiful headquarters in Herne during June last year. But in November 2019 I still had the opportunity to meet my boss Sven Oelert, CEO of the Vulkan Group, and all other general management colleagues from our worldwide companies upon ocasion of our General Management Meeting in Madrid, which had as its culmination point our participation in the wonderful 50th anniversay party of our sister company Vulkan Espanola (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/spain). 

And for sure – fitting nicely to the headline of this post – my today`s music video recommendation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IT8XvzIfi4U

Looking forward to the soon starting wonderful weekend! Wish You a lot of relaxation and hope to meet again with You tomorrow here in my blog.

Hello again readers of my posts and followers of my blog. 

Yesterday in the afternoon I enjoyed once again the great pleasure, to participate in an online meeting of the „circle of subsidiaries of German companies doing business in Chile“ perfectly organised by Camchal (https://chile.ahk.de/es/), the German-Chilean Chamber of Industry and Commerce, and wonderfully moderated by Mrs. Johanna Sternberg, deputy Managing Director of Camchal. 

We meet in this circle once per month in order to exchange experiences regarding the development of the  business of our companies and the general political-economical situation in Chile. Yesterday in total 18 people participated in the event.

Chile as the number 1 copper producing country in the world and with several of the biggest copper mines (number 1: Escondida, 1.4 million tons/year, Atacama region/Chile; number 2: Collahuasi, 570.000 tons/year, Atacama region/Chile; number 9: El Teniente, 422.000 tons/year, Andes region/Chile; number 10: Chuquicamata, Antofagasta region/Chile: 390.000 tons/year) is one of the most important markets in Latin America for the Vulkan Drive Tech Latam division of our company Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil).

Since almost 30 years SCEM Ltda (https://scem-chile.cl/), managed by our great friend and exclusive distribution partner Andres Puglisevich and his excelent team, from out of its headquarters and factory in Maipú, Santiago, and it`s service & distribution center in Antofagasta in the north of the country, supplies and services our full portfolio of all types of couplings, brakes and backstops for all typical kinds of industrial mechanical power transmission applications all over Chile. 

For sure we are since years, although we do not operate an own office in Chile, associated to Camchal and participate in all important events and also in the German pavillions in the very important mining exhibitions Expomin and Exponor whenever these occur. 

We are especially well connected to the very active Competence Center of Mining and Mineral Resources at Camcham, which is beeing managed by our great friend Annika Glatz, Project Leader Mining, Raw Materials and Sustainability, where we also participate very actively in all relevant events and activities like industry delegations of German mining suppliers, B2Bs and technical visits to mines. 

On the above foto collage with pictures from different events and activities in Chile, You can see Johanna Sternberg moderating our yesterday`s online meeting of the “German circle”, Andres Puglisevich, General Manager of SCEM Ltda and me together with Mrs. Cornelia Sonnenberg, Managing Director of Camchal, Andres and me together with Annika Glatz and Andres and his lovely wife Suzete and my brazilian management team colleague Arno Ett (arno.ett@vulkan.com, +55 11 99512 4929), Sales Director of Vulkan Drive Tech Latam, who is responsible for all our industrial sales in Mexico, Central America, Caribbean and all South America with the only exception of Brazil.

Beside the above mentioned products for industrial applications we also supply – under the responsability of Elisangela Santos (elisangela.santos@vulkan.com; +55 11 99619 2808) as the Sales Director for this division at Vulkan do Brasil and strongly supported by our chilean distributor and friend Gonzalo Larenas (+56 994825 109, glarenas@indusmar.cl) and his company Repuestos y Servicios Indusmar Ltda (http://indusmar.cl/) in Viña del Mar – our full portfolio of products for marine and diesel power generation applications of our division Vulkan Couplings (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/couplings) to the chilean market.

With these strong, highly experienced and very active partners and their excelent services, Vulkan has since many years become one of the market and technology leaders for these industrial and marine products and applications in Chile.

We are very proud about this wonderful success achievement in Chile together with our partners SCEM and Indusmar and we are fully identified with the needs and expectations of our many customers there.

In a future post I will explain a little more in detail, how we are exactly supporting the marine industry in Chile and the chilean navy and if You have not yet had the chance to visit this beautiful country, I warmly recommend this for You for as soon as the Covid-19 crisis and the travelling restrictions have come to it`s hopefully soon end.

Thanks for Your highly appreciated attention. I wish You a happy and successful day. 

 Good morning all You highly welcome readers of my posts and followers of my blog from places almost on all continents of the globe. 

Today – answering a question, which I am quite often beeing asked – I would like to share my own private and professional experiences with the utilisation of linkedin as a social media tool. 

I have just found out in my profile, that I am a linkedin user (“member”) since April 24, 2010, means since meanwhile 10 years. To be true – I had the feeling, that this was much longer already, but obviously it is not the case. One more hint, that we have to be very careful with “feelings” when it comes to facts and numbers.

Some people still believe, that linkedin users were primarily looking for new job opportunities. But I do not really believe in this. For sure almost all of us are permanently open for new improvement opportunities and lots of people seek openly or – as our company does as well – offer new jobs in linkedin.

But this was definitely not the reason for me, when I joined linkedin as a user 10 years ago. At that time, just half a year living in beautiful Recife in the northeast of Brazil, to where I had moved 5 months earlier together with my familly from Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, I was earning good money by doing interim management for German industrial companies in Brazil and in those days I thought, that I would continue forever working independently and as my own boss in this way. 

I think it was mainly for curiosity and because some friends recommended this to me, that I registered as linkedin user. And as far as I remember, I did not really use it very intensively. 

My real interest in using actively linkedin came several years later, when I was working as Managing Director at GEA do Brasil (Heat Exchanger division of the GEA Group, today Kelvion) in Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo, from 2011 on.  

At that time I was developping several strategic projects together with my management team colleagues and I started to discover the opportunities for finding interesting information and contacts to customers, suppliers, service providers incl. consultants and other helpful people by using actively linkedin and other online information sources.

And this was also the time when I started to look up worldwide friends, colleagues and former colleagues and when the construction of my extensive global contact network began. But I doubt, that I had more than 1000 contacts until then. Today I have already more than 10.000. And – and this is extremely important for me to say – I am quite selective and criterious, when it comes to the acception of contact requests. 

I have always given very high importance to keep a certain quality level of my network and not to collect dubious people, which You can find easily everywhere and easily, as f.e. in linkedin and all the other social media. 

My really active utilisation and experience with linkedin started only from the end of 2014 on, when I had started in my todays function as President of Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil) in Itatiba, Sao Paulo. 

The main reason was, that I found quite quickly out, that my management team colleague Elisangela Santos (elisangela.santos@vulkan.com; +55 11 99619 2808), Sales Director for our marine division Vulkan Couplings (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/couplings) in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Suriname and Guyana and also Marketing Director of our company, was already a very active and experienced linkedin user.

When we discovered, that we had very similiar interests and experiences in social media, marketing, new company and general cultural subjects and developments, we immediately started our until today very intensive colaboration and joint development of related projects for our company. 

Actually Elisangela had already several years ago opened one of the worldwide first linkedin groups for Vulkan. And our linkedin group Vulkan do Brasil has already attracted lots of followers, mainly in Brazil itself. 

Since then other very experienced, creative and highly active linkedin and social media in general users developped within our management team and more and more also in our whole company. And our Brazilian linkedin group never stopped to grow. 

Until today we have already attracted more than 10.000 followers – by far the most of them high professionals and decision makers at many places, companies, industries, institutions and associations etc. 

But we also have created sister groups in linkedin for our industrial sales division Vulkan Drive Tech Latam (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/drivetech) and for our 2 years ago created Vulkan Southern Hemisphere initiative, which comprises the Brazilian, Australian and South African companies of the Vulkan Group:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/vulkan-do-brasil/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/vulkandrivetechlatam/

https://www.linkedin.com/company/vulkan-southern-hemisphere/

All our linkedin groups have meanwhile become strong communication channels to our worldwide followers incl. to many of our Vulkan Group colleagues and also to many employees of our own company. We post quite frequently news about us, our company and our business and share this content with our followers and the public. 

This has created a very nice communication with our audience and we receive a lot of (almost always positive) feedback from lots of people from all over the world. And all our groups keep constantly growing. 

And for sure – coming back to the statement from the beginning – many candidates approach us in linkedin and apply for jobs with us and we also nowadays use linkedin very actively for direct and indirect candidate search, whenever we are hiring new employees for almost all levels of our organisation.

I hope that this has given You a rough idea, of how I personally and how we as Vulkan do Brasil use this tool and for which purposes. 

In future posts I will also give You some insights in how and when we have developped our social media strategy, with which other social media we have gained experience so far, what we understand as “social selling” and as “influencing”. 

That`s all what I wanted to share with You for today. Have lots of fun and success and see You again here in my blog tomorrow. 

 Good morning everybody. I am happy to see You all again back here in my blog. For my todays post I have once again chosen an intellectually challenging subject. I can`t just bore You with posts about soccer and beer. We all need some nutrition for our brains as well. 

The famous term “creative destruction” has been popularized in economy by Joseph Schumpeter through his books “Business Cycles” and “Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy” first published during 1939 respectively 1942 in the USA.

But let`s at first ask wikipedia for giving us some background information about who the hell was Joseph Schumpeter:

“Joseph Alois Schumpeter (8 February 1883 – 8 January 1950) was an Austrian political economist. He emigrated to the US, became a professor at Harvard University, where he remained until the end of his career and, in 1939, he obtained the American citizenship. He was born in Moravia and has briefly served as Finance Minister of the Republic of German-Austria during 1919. Schumpeter was one of the most influential economists of the early 20th century.”

Creative destruction – also known as “Schumpeter`s gale” – is a concept in economics, which Schumpeter had derived from the work of Karl Marx and presented as a theory of economic innovation and the business cycle.

According to Schumpeter, the “gale of creative destruction” describes the “process of industrial mutation that continuously revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one and incessantly creating a new one”.

The term subsequently gained popularity within mainstream economics as a description of processes such as downsizing in order to increase the efficiency and dynamism of companies.

Since my final and definitive (?) return from Mexico to Brazil at the end of 2009 I have started all my subsequent jobs as General Manager for Fabrima (packaging machinery for the pharmaceutical and food industry), Managing Director for GEA do Brasil (heat exchangers for the oil & gas industry) and President of Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil) as Interim Manager, contracted by distinguished German interim management providers and lent to the companies, for which I did the complete restructurings of their brazilian subsidiaries. By the way – all these companies bought me out of my interim management contracts with the providers (which was financially very nice for them) very quickly and hired me as own fix employee.

I rember my return to Brazil very nicely, because during my first weekend – living in the beautiful beach city of Recife, about 2500 km in the northeast of Sao Paulo – my beloved carioca (means: from Rio de Janeiro) soccer team Flamengo won it`s 5th Brazilian soccer league title by 2:1 against its adversary Gremio (from Porto Alegre in the south of Brazil) in it`s home stadium Maracana at Rio de Janeiro in front of impressive 85.000 spectators. And for sure – together with my familly, relatives and friends – we watched and enjoyed this exciting play in one of the wonderful beach bars and drank plenty of ice cold Brazilian beers. “After action (in Mexico) – satisfaction (in Brazil)” (:-

In the foto collage above I show You: 

1) todays brutal destruction (for the posterior reconstruction and modernization) of my former home office and barbeque station in our garden

2) my new temporary home office in the freshly constructed – but not equipped yet – gym of our house

3) Luke, my faithful home office assistant and his main occupation

4) The first foto of  my wonderful management team at Vulkan do Brasil during October 2014, shortly after my arrival in Itatiba. Since then only one manager has left us and on the foto two new management team members, who followed me to Vulkan do Brasil from GEA do Brasil during January 2015, after my interim management contract was terminated and I had become a fix Vulkan employee, were still missing.

This is a good opportunity for me to share with You a very particular and delicious experience, which I made at Recife at that time. For historical and cultural reasons, Recife has since longer become the by far biggest local and regional consumer market for whisky within Brazil. People say, that this goes back to the 19th century, when lots of english, scottish and irish railway workers were laying the rails for the at that time quite extended and massively utilised railway network in this part of the country. 

But the people in Recife region have since then tropicalized the way of drinking whisky. They use ice cubes of coconut water for “whisky on the rocks”. This is really a great mixture. But – to be honest – You must only use a cheap (but not too bad) blended whisky and not at all any precious single malts. Just try it once at Your home and give me Your feedback. It`s really wonderful. Believe me. Even more in the constant (all year long) heat in the Brazilian north-east.

And another particularity which until today I have only encountered in the greater Recife area are the “whisky clubs”, which are very popular there. In many bars and restaurants people buy their own bottles of whisky and leave them – with their names written on them – in special “whisky club” cupboards which are full with up to hundreds of more or less full respectively empty whisky bottles. And whenever the owners of these bottles go there, the just ask the waiters to bring them their bottles and ice instead of ordering any other drinks. Quite funny. Isn`t it? 

But I made bad experience with the “whisky club” when I had left my bottle still half full (not half empty !) in the cupboard of my favorite beach bar in Recife, shortly before I moved to Sao Paulo for getting started on my interim management job at Fabrima. When I came back to Recife after nine months for helping my wife and our 2 sons to organize their moval to me to Sao Paulo, I learned painfully, that the whisky bottles are only beeing guarded there in the “whisky club” cupboards for their owners for exactly 6 months. On the first day after the completion of the sixth month the owners of the bar let the “expired” bottles be used for serving customers who just order single drinks and not bottles. Life can be hard sometimes, would You agree with this?

Let`s come back to “Schumpeter`s gale” and my interim management jobs as restructurer. The restructuring of a company has a lot in common with the term “creative destruction”. Because You normally at first “destroy” the existing company organisation, question all existing procederes and processes, but You also immediately – the speed of this is absolutely decisive for Your success! – start to “construct” a new organisation, procedures and processes. I have done this several times and I must admit, that this is one of the most fancy experiences, which I have made during my professional career so far. 

But it is really important for me to state, that a well executed restructuring project has nothing to do with destruction, damage and suffering. In the contrary. I imagine, that helpers at traffic accidents and surgeons have the same success feeling and satisfaction, when they rescue people from death.

And let`s be sincere and true. Isn`t the actual, modern term “disruptive” something very similiar? In the end old things have to be substituted by new things, when their live, importance, ability for contribution and further development has come to its end. That`s at least how I understand Schumpeter`s gale” and give my sincere credits to good old Schumpeter and his phenomenal term and theory creation. 

Did You hold out and follow my above insights and thought sharings? Tell me truth. What was the most interesting information which I have shared today with You?  “Schumpeter`s gale” or the ingenious “tropical whisky” formula ???? I still hope that both fascinated You. 

Just before closing this post here one more music video recommendation, which I think fits somehow quite well to the subjects mentioned above. But this is a real “old timer” (first released by Marry Mc Guire during 1965), actually it was a very popular protest (against lots of things which You can easily recognize as still actual on Your TVs today) song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfZVu0alU0I

Let`s meet here in my post and blog again tomorrow. Have a great and successful day!

 Hi all You faithful readers of my posts and followers of my blog. A great new week has just started and I have been busy for a couple of hours already. 

One of the subjects of my discussion with my Brazilian application engineering colleagues has been about a very interesting oil & gas application at a US based customer for our Discflex membrane couplings, which we have developped and which we proudly and with the highest quality (API  class approval) manufacture at our factory in Itatiba.

This led me to the decision, to explain a little bit today to You, how the close cooperation of Vulkan do Brasil (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/drivetech/vulkan-companies/brazil) with our sister company American Vulkan (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/usa)  in the America`s region, means in Canada, US, Mexico, Central America, Caribbean and all South America works.

Our North American colleagues, from out of their headquarters and factory in Orlando, Florida, and their regional sales & engineering offices and distribution network all over the United States, supply the different markets and industries – the same like Vulkan do Brasil – with the full portfolio of all products and services of the 3 divisions of the Vulkan Group. 

In the case of our Vulkan Lokring division (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/lokring) American Vulkan supplies all customers in Canada, the United States, in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, whilst Vulkan do Brasil attends all customers all over South America.

For all products and services of our marine division Vulkan Couplings (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/couplings) American Vulkan attends all customers in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the South American countries Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia, whilst Vulkan do Brasil is responsible for all sales of this division in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Brasil, Suriname and Guyana. 

And for our industrial division Vulkan Drive Tech (https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/drivetech) American Vulkan attends all customers in Canada and in the United States, whilst Vulkan do Brazil resp. it`s sub division Vulkan Drive Tech Latam, from out of our headquarters and factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, and our regional sales & engineering offices in Bogotá, Colombia, and Mexico City, are responsible for all our sales to industrial customers in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and all South America. 

At the first glance this looks complicated, but it definitely is not. Both Vulkan Group companies in the United States and in Brazil work fully integrated in our worldwide group, respect each other and work very closely and nicely together, always looking for the achievement of full satisfaction for all our customers of the 3 divisions and in all countries from the extreme north of Canada down to the deepest south of Argentina and Chile. 

Actually we share a lot of globally active customers with our colleagues in Orlando and we as Vulkan Group attend these perfectly over the whole Americas region, wherever they are. American Vulkan is very much experienced and specialized on marine technology and we at Vulkan do Brasil have more than 4 decades long wide experience with all kinds of industrial products and applications.

This makes our very close colaboration between both companies and teams a perfect fit. And for sure we are constantly communicating between both places and teams and we have visited each other several times during the last years. As soon as Covid-19 disappears as a threat, we will meet each other again in Orlando and in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, for doing workshops, trainings and – very important – having a couple of beers and caipirinhas. 

Above pictures show our last Brazilian team visit to American Vulkan`s beautiful facility in Orlando. I had travelled there together with my colleagues Ferdinand Senske, VP Operations at our factory in Itatiba, Josias Leal, Development & Engineering Director of Vulkan do Brasil, and Tiago Bedani, Sales Director Vulkan Drive Tech Brazil at Vulkan do Brasil, for meeting with Eric Mowrer, Managing Director of American Vulkan, Thomas Lehner, Global Production Director & VP Operations at American Vulkan and their wonderful team members during a few days. 

This is the big advantage of our company. On one hand we are a really globally positioned and acting company with our factories in Germany, India, China, US and Brazil, our sales subsidiaries on all continents and our distribution networks in many countries. But on the other hand we are still famous German “Mittelstand”, means we have a reasonable company size and are familly owned (4th generation, since more than 130 years), which allows us to react in a very agile and efficient way to all customer needs. We are extremely experienced, have lots of know how and all necessary resources inside our own company for doing our jobs, but we are fast like Formula 1 cars and listen always to our customers, wherever they are around the globe. This is what makes us so attractive for them.

I hope, You found this interesting. See You tomorrow again in my next post. 

Have fun and success! Take care!

 Good afternoon readers of my todays post. Today we have a very special day here in Brazil. Because today we celebrate “Fathers Day” here. No idea whether this is the same today for You at any other countries in the world, but anyhow I wish all my Brazilian and all other global friends, a Happy Fathers Day.

Last night I watched the final game of the soccer championship in Sao Paulo state, which always is a very exciting event and which fortunately this year – just due to the limitations imposed by Covid-19 – has been peaceful and without the usual outbreak of violence between the organized supporters of the different teams.

Palmeiras, the team which I am supporting since a couple of years in Sao Paulo, won this championship for the 23rd time, but for the first time again after a period of non-successful 12 long years, against its main rival Corinthians at its home stadium Allianz Parque in Sao Paulo city.

This gives me the opportunity to explain one of the – admittedly very few – problems which I encounter with my Brazilian fellows since I came to this wonderful country about 25 years ago for the first time.

As I have been moving constantly from places and countries to new places and countries during great part of my life and professional career, I have quite quickly and easily become accustomed to get familiar with different cultures and ways of life and to get integrated into these. 

What I learned from my first time outside Germany (better: Europe) on, was the importance of soccer for many people – including most of my employees, local customers, suppliers and service providers – at the different places where I have been living and working and for our daily conversations and friendship. 

In order to become fully accepted and to be able to share the full experience and beautiful events, I always decided to adhere to one of the locally dominating soccer teams wherever I went. And for sure I strongly support all the national teams of the countries where I have been living during all international tournaments, even when it comes to plays against Germany, which I normally support as well.

This has made me become a quite rare bird. Because – wherever I have been living – people are very much used to support through all their live only one soccer team and no others, at least in their own country. Which I find not very explanatory, because in big countries with regionally differenciated and distributed situations – why not support teams there as well? 

Something which is much more crazy for me is, that in many Latin American countries people tend to support only their particular local soccer teams and not at all their national team. And also the wide spread behaviour, to support the adversaries of other teams from their own country when playing against international competitors from other countries. 

But maybe this all is a really a private, personal issue. I mean, I am not changing my loyalty to different local and national teams over time like a chameleon. Once I have started to support a local or national team, I stick to it. But my clear strategic advantage is, that – at least during international tournaments – I have “many irons in the fire”. Think about it! 

Now our barbeque is ready, the ice cold beer is waiting in the fridge and in about 3 hours the Brazilian national soccer league play between my number one Brazilian soccer team Flamengo, from Rio de Janeiro, and its today`s adversary Atlético Mineiro will begin. 

Enjoy the rest of this beautiful weekend and fill up Your batteries for next weeks business battles.