Personal & Professional Experiences & Insights

Good morning all You readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Today I will give You some insights in my first experiences as traveller to China and doing business there.  My first travel to China goes back to Abril 2014. After an extremely tense, exciting but also exhausting negotiation period of several months and a final full deal closing week at a hotel in Rio de Janeiro, I brought home to our company the biggest contract, which my company had ever negociated with a single customer until then since the start of its brazilian operations about 40 years earlier. The net contract value was about 80 million Reais.  This was during my last year as Managing Director of GEA Heat Exchangers do Brasil (now Kelvion:   https://www.kelvion.com/br/ ) at Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo. We gained the contract for the construction and delivery of practically all shell & tube heat exchangers for the two deep sea oil platforms P75 and P77 for Petrobras. Our customer was a Brazilian oil & gas

Good to see You again here in my blog right now. For my todays post I have chosen a subject, wich since longer impresses and drives me very much. Actually I decided to talk about this subject today because of a certain coincidence of events and activities during the last couple of days, which all somehow lead to this subject and which all have a lot to do with it. I am talking about the concept of the "stakeholdership".  About two weeks ago in a former post (https://klausfhepp.blogspot.com/2020/07/my-experience-with-lean-as-strong-and.html) I have shared some experiences about the beginning of the introduction of Lean Management principles and concepts into our factory in Itatiba some years ago.  Since about the same time I am reading a very interesting - but unfortunately so far only available in German language - book ("Digitale Transformation gestalten" - Geschäftsmodelle, Erfolgsfaktoren, Checklisten, Oliver Gassmann / Philipp Sutter, Hanser Verlag), which expla

Good morning my dear readers of my daily posts and highly esteemed followers of my blog. Today I will share my experience with a self developped life and work management tool with You, which during the last at least 10 last years has definitely helped me, to conduct my life and my job  much more relaxed and self controlled than before.  I use to call this tool my "You`re the boss" principle. Many of my friends and most of my companions, colleagues and employees already know this term very well from me. Actually I apply this tool during great part of my daily activities - as well during my private ones as also during all my professional ones.  What the hell now does it mean? Well, it`s very simple. It is based on the assumption, that during most of the situations and activities in which You participate and act over a day, the leadership and responsability can be delegated - at least momentarily and partially - to somebody present, who has the highest experience, know how or wh

Good morning everybody here in my today`s post about our technology cooperation with the German university TU Darmstadt. But before coming to Darmstadt we need to talk about Piracicaba in the interior of the brazilian state of Sao Paulo. In October 2018 I participated together with my Vulkan do Brasil colleagues Josias Leal (josias.leal@vulkan.com), Development & Engineering Director, Marcel Moraes (marcel.moraes@vulkan.com), Development Manager, Julio Leite (julio.leite@vulkan.com), Development Engineer, and Ferdinand Senske (ferdinand.senske@vulkan.com), VP Operations, upon indication of  my friend Mauricio Muramoto, President of the VDI Brasil ( https://www.vdibrasil.com/ ) in the fantastic "23rd International Seminar for High Technologies" in Piracicaba, a city of 300.000 inhabitants at about one and a half hours car drive distance away from Itatiba, where our company is located.  The "International Seminar for High Technologies" ( https://scpm.eng.br/semina

Hello here again in my blog all You faithful readers of my daily posts. I am seriously quite sure, that this has to do with the global warming up and climate change, but it is not a lie if I tell You, that since I started with working in my home office, immediately after the return from my french language intensive training in Paris in the middle of March, I can hardly count more than 4 days with "bad" weather, means with rain and lower temperatures. Actually we are here amidst winter now. But nothing indicates this. In the contrary, the weather is more like summer since 4 months and so far no change of this has been predicted. I mean, I personally love these sunny, warm and dry days. And for the refurbishment of my house and garden areas which are continuing still, this is a present from heaven. But seen from a general and global climate standpoint, it starts to really worry me.  Yesterday I had a chat with my friend and former colleague at Henkel`s Corporate Engineering Dep

Good morning everybody here in my blog. Today I would like to share our experiences with doing home office since meanwhile unbelievable four consecutive months at our company Vulkan do Brasil ( https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil ) in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, Brazil, and I would also like to share some personal experiences with You upon all the different offices which I already had at all the different companies, where I have been working so far in different countries on different continents. Since the ofical outbreak and spread of Covid-19 in Brazil during the middle of March, we have implemented several protection measures and rules within our company and in our factory.  Our "Covid-19 Committee" (VP Admin, VP Operations, HR & Special Projects Director and myself) meets every two days for half an hour online and follows all developments in our company and in Brazil and the rest of the world closely and takes all necessary corrective decisions. This w

Hello again here in my blog to all my readers and followers. Today I am definitely late with my post, but I have an excuse, which will hopefully find Your acceptation.  Since I have received so uncredibly many wonderful messages in linkedin from friends, business partners and general contacts from all over the world on my birthday, I had originally decided, just to answer to all these collectively in my birthday post. But this morning I came to the conclusion, that this would be unfair and I changed my mind and decided, to answer personally all these highly appreciated messages. And I started directly with it, but because of the really huge quantity of greetings messages, I did not even get through a third of all these until now.  But You don`t need to worry and may continue to trust my words and discipline. I will definitely conclude with answering all birthday greetings in the latest until tomorrow evening. And with respect to how I will deal with this next year, we can relax and lea

Good morning everybody here in my blog. For my today`s post I have chosen to share with You my first ever travelling experience to Australia.  During our annual "Global Management Meeting" in November 2018 at our HQ in Herne, Germany, the CFO of the Vulkan Group ( https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding ) - meanwhile Sven Oelert has become our CEO -  to whom I report luckily and proudly, invited me to visit our sister companies in South Africa and Australia and to develop a project for strong colaboration between our three "Southern Hemisphere" companies Vulkan Australia ( https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/australia ), Vulkan do Brasil ( https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil ) and Vulkan South Africa ( https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/drivetech/vulkan-companies/africa ) and for a joint market expansion project with our industrial products on the Australian and African continents.  This was due to the fact, that Sven liked very muc

Hi all You faithful readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Today I am going to proudly present to You - what a shame! - the so far one and only female member of our Vulkan do Brasil ( https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil ) management team, my highly esteemed colleague and great friend Elisangela Santos (elisangela.santos@vulkan.com, +55 11 99619 2808).  Elisangela actually has two very important functions within our company. She`s our Marketing Director and at the same time she`s the Sales Director of our Vulkan Couplings division @ Vulkan do Brasil. Vulkan Couplings ( https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/couplings )  is one of the three divisions of the globally active Vulkan Group. For more than 130 years we have been developing, producing and marketing innovative system solutions for marine drive technology. We are the market and technology leader in the development of highly flexible couplings for marine engines, shaft systems and elastic mounts. Our customis

Good morning all my post readers and blog followers. Today I will share with You the interesting insights and inspirations which I have gained yesterday morning at my home office in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, during my participation in the wonderful webinar "Sustainable Development - Quo Vadis ?", which was perfectly organised by the AHK Delegation of German Industry and Commerce in Nigeria ( https://nigeria.ahk.de/en/ ). Webinar speakers were Mrs. Katharina Felgenhauer, Delegate of the AHK Nigeria, and - as special guest - Mrs. Naomi Nwokolo, Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact Network Nigeria ( https://www.unglobalcompact.org/engage-locally/africa/nigeria ). Although I had already heard about these, I was not really aware - and much less in detail - of the United Nation`s "17 Goals to Transform Our World" ( https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/ ) published recently as a response to Covid-19 or, as expressed so nicely and clearly by António Guterr