Personal & Professional Experiences & Insights

Hi highly appreciated readers of my blog, are there still any of You out there? After the incredible time of 16 months, which has passed since the publication of my latest post here in this blog, to be exact, published during monday, december 5, 2022, I would like to resume this activity now and finally get back to all of You from today on.  But not only plenty of time has passed since december 5, 2022.  Lots of things have happened and changed since then - for all of us.  The whole world has become much more "vuca". To see a nice, short explanation for this term, which was more widely used years ago, but which - for my concern - continues very instructive, please look up this publicly available explanation:  https://hbr.org/2014/01/what-vuca-really-means-for-you . In my own personal case, 2023 has become a somehow decisive year, full of new, partially expected & partially unexpected, challenges, experiences, surprises and learnings - as well speaking about my professiona

Hi all You globally distributed readers of my posts and followers of my blog.  Let me at first say congrats to all of us! Today is the 1st anniversary of my blog since I published the first of my meanwhile in total 84 (including this one) posts on thursday morning, June 18, 2020.  The initial idea behind my decision to become a blogger had been, to enhance the open exchange of personal & professional experiences with You and to increase my worldwide network of personal & professional contacts. What states clearly after exactly one year now is, that both objectives have been more than fully accomplished. I must admit, that it still impresses me a lot, how many people at totally distant places all around the globe show ongoing interest in my posts, comment on these and enter into direct contact with me. That`s really amazing and it makes me feel enormously honored and proud. Thank`s for all that support and fidelity. As I had already mentioned in my first post exactly one year ag

 Hi all You readers of my posts here in my blog. Time today to share some more experiences with You. Did You already realise that we`re almost 2 weeks in front of the first anniversary of my blog? Wow. Uncredible how fast time is running.  Since my last post a lot of important things have happened here. Together with my colleagues Ferdinand Senske, VP Operations, and Luis Traúzola, VP Admin/Finance, I have decided to abandon our offices and instead of these we construct now a new, modern open meeting & working space area, which will be much more appropriate for our future "hybrid" work mode @ our factory in Itatiba. And this "constructive desctruction" (Schumpeter) has already started! If everything goes as scheduled, we should be able to inaugurate our new office area until the end of July. And we`re all terribly curious and impatient now.  Two weeks ago I have received my first Astra Zeneca vaccination dosis. On the following 2 days I was completely knocked do

 Hi all You readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Time has come for writing a new post here once again.   Actually this is post number 80 in this blog since I started it and since I wrote my first post here on June 18, 2020. I am very positively impressed by the success of this project, which I had initiated from out of nothing more than just a spontaneous idea and the wish to try this out. Thanks to all You supporters who keep motivating and inspiring me for continuation.  The first time I really attentatively noted the warning phrase "mind the gap" was when I visited the beautiful Sugar Cane Mountain in Rio de Janeiro about two years ago with one of our new African business partners.  No matter all undoubtedly existing bad things in and about Rio, I continue with my deep passionate love for this Marvelous City since I had first visited it for the first time in July 1996. During the last 25 years I have been there very often, mainly for spending wonderful weekends wi

Dear followers of my blog and readers of my posts. It is time again for sharing some personal & professional experiences, which I have mainly made during the last 10 years, with You.  The idea to do so came up in my head this morning, when I read newspaper articles about the problem with the big container ship blocking the Suez canal right now after an accident and the  massive delay of deliveries of goods from Asia to Europe resulting from this.  Actually I called immediately my Vulkan do Brasil management team colleague Christoph Kuehnel, our Purchasing & Foreign Trade Director, and asked him, whether he thought that this could strike us. Fortunately Christoph, who already had verified this in detail with his team of colaborators, calmed me down. So far no risk of delays for our supply stream of raw materials, components and finished products from our Vulkan Group sister plants in India and China and from several suppliers in China, Corea and India to our factory in Itatiba,

 Good morning all You highly esteemed readers of my posts here in my blog.  Once again I have decided to share some personal & professional experiences with You. This time I will talk about a subject, which very often is not very much welcome by people. But in my case, I have really enjoyed  all these challenges and experiences. Last week, during my "factory day", I have cleaned up my office at our wonderful company in Itatiba, so that our maintenance team can get started on tearing it down. Together with my colleagues Luis Traúzola, Vice President Admin/Finance, and Ferdinand Senske, Vice President Operations, I have decided, to give up our current 3 individual offices and to construct instead of these a modern, shared, open space, co-working office, where we altogether may use any of the 3 office desks to be installed there, whenever we visit our factory and work there.  The idea to do so has clearly been generated based on our experiences during the so far almost 12 mo

 Good afternoon all You followers of my blog and readers of my posts. Since my last post about 3 weeks ago I have been very busy mainly with the set up of the internal structures and key processes for several of the new strategic projects, which we have foreseen within our company for active realisation during this year. For our completely new company Vulkan Africa ( https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/africa ) my colleagues in Germany, South Africa and we here in Brazil have altogether defined the organisation and the main communication and reporting lines. Under my responsability and leadership as MD, two management teams will from now on be the motors for the development of all our business activities in the in total 48 different countries in the whole sub-Saharan region of the African continent. We have set up the management team for Vulkan Africa and we also have set up a seperate management team for the Southern African sub region, where under the responsability

 Hi everybody. Good to meet again with all of You here in my blog for my today`s post. Exactly 3 weeks have passed since the return from my year`s end vacations in beautiful Recife on the wonderful coast in the northeast of Brazil. And I can tell You, that this seems to have already been at least 6 months ago because of the lots of business and other activities which I have been realizing since I came back home to Vinhedo, Sao Paulo.  The year 2021 has wonderfully started for us @ Vulkan do Brasil. Our factory continues full with orders for mining, steel, cement, sugar, oil & gas, energy and lots of other customer industries allover Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, US, Europe, Africa, Malaysia, Corea, China and Australia. That`s what motivates us and keeps us energized. On the other hand we continue full speed with our development projects for several new products and we also have just started several projects within our "factory of the future" strategy, which will

Hi all You followers of my blog and readers of my posts. Before getting started on writing my first post during 2021, I would like at first to to wish all of You all the very best for this still quite new year. I hope, that none of You has fallen ill and/or caught Covid-19 since we met here for the last time shortly before X-mas. Take a hell of care! Things around the globe continue very critical with respect to this pandemia- despite the words of too many ignorants and liars and  the still quite slow start of the vaccination in meanwhile 65 countries, but - what a surprise ?! - not yet here in Brazil. As explained by our federal health minister, General Pazuello, we still need to wait for "day D" and the "hour H" for vaccination start in Brazil.  Do You remember my comment in my last post with respect to my own curiosity about my conditions and discipline to realise the plan mentioned here, to go 100% offline of all my social media channels incl. whatsapp, instagra

Good afternoon all You faithful readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Time has come, to write my last post here during the year 2020. I have been extremely busy and productive during the last weeks and my countless online conferences and meetings supplied me with an impressive colection of subjects and experiences, which I would like to share openly with You in this and in my next posts. What a crazy year was this? If I had seen half of what has finally come over all of us in the whole wide world since the outbreak of Covid-19 at the beginning of this year in a movie, I would most propably have fallen into sleep or left the cinema resp. switched the TV channel. Such really impressive stories can`t be invented by human writers and can only be imposed by live reality, which is wonderfully unlimited with regards to the invention of new situations and developments,  On March 17th, 2020, after an initial shock I cancelled all my already booked flights to Europe, Africa, Australia, L