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Showing posts from August, 2020

Our active participation in the VDMA Brasil`s events and activities

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 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 - mo

German bread, wheat beer and other cultural and culinarial experiences as German faraway from Germany

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 Hi everybody. Thanks for Your respective questions and concerns. I am fine and had just taken a post free day yesterday because of my really arduous agenda during the last couple of days.  On wednesday evening I participated until 11pm in an online conference with our colleagues in Singapore, on thursday morning I participated from 5:30am on in the online meeting of the VDMA Mining Steering Committee Asia together with many colleagues and friends from other German mining industry suppliers. Our host has been this time the VDMA India. Directly after this event I participated in an online event of the Competence Center for Mining and Mineral Resources of the AHK Peru and in the afternoon we had a 4 hours online training event for all Vulkan do Brasil sales managers together with external consultants. And in the evening I had another online conference with my colleagues in Singapore and directly after this an online conference with my colleagues in Australia.  Due to this challenging and

AHK Sao Paulo, Competence Center for Mining & Mineral Resources and GIE Meetings - insights in some interesting activities

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Good morning everybody here in my blog. Good to see all of You again. In my todays post I will share some experiences with You about our active colaboration with the Competence Center for Mining and Mineral Resources of the German-Brazilian Chamber of Commerce and Industry AHK Sao Paulo ( https://www.ahkbrasilien.com.br/ ).  Vulkan do Brasil ( https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil ) is associated to the AHK Sao Paulo since April 12, 1975, means practically since we opened our company in this beautiful country 45 years ago. From my return from Mexico to Brazil on - at the end of 2009 - I have always represented the German companies, for which I have been working here, in the AHK`s in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and in Porto Alegre. And since then we have always participated very actively in many of the AHK Sao Paulo`s, Rio de Janeiro`s and Porto Alegre`s fantastic events and activities. Since 2 years ago I proudly represent Vulkan do Brasil as elected member of the

Insights from yesterday`s Economist interview with Bill Gates about Covid-19

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 Hello everybody. Good to see You again here in my blog for sharing with You my post number 63.  This morning I was once more impressed, how immediately after publishing my post, the first readers popped up at such exciting different places all over the world as Cologne/Germany, Curitiba/Brazil, Sydney/Australia, Austria area, Huddersfield/United Kingdom, Kuala Lumpur/Malaysia and Campo Grande/Brazil.  Thank You very much for Your ongoing interest in my posts, interesting comments and comradship.  For my todays post I have decided to share some information about how we deal actually with Covid-19 at our company Vulkan do Brasil ( https://www.vulkan.com/en-us/holding/vulkan-companies/brazil ) and the Covid-19 development in general. As already mentioned in earlier posts, we have in different steps implemented lots of protection measures at our factory in Itatiba, Sao Paulo, and for all our employees in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico since the spread of Covid-19 started in the middle of mar

This man`s a Vulkan - but not on fire, because Lokring works flame free

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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

The power of coincidence

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 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 enou

Mindelo, Cesaria Évora, Tito Paris & my very nice travel & cultural experiences made in Cape Verde (part 2)

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 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 acti

Mindelo, Cesaria Évora, Tito Paris & my very nice travel & cultural experiences made in Cape Verde (part 1)

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 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 H

No visits to headquarters, No cry

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 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 ou

Experiences with Camchal, copper mines, the marine industry & the navy in Chile

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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: Chuq

Experience sharing - linkedin as social media tool for private and professional utilisation

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 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 defi

My admiration for "creative destruction" and "tropical whisky"

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 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 Germ

Our close cooperation & friendship with our North American colleagues

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 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 re

Some personal thoughts derived from yesterday`s soccer championship finals in Sao Paulo

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 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 f

Result of my today’s short „blitz“ visit to our factory – everything exactly as expected

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Hi everybody. Good to see You again here in my blog. This post is going to be a very special one. Believe it or not - this is my first post which I write in my office at our factory in Itatiba.  Since almost 5 months I am working at home in our house in Vinhedo and I have come only very rarely to our company during all this time. But this does not at all mean, that I work less or that any of my responsabilities and duties have been neglected.  It`s just a different way of doing things for many of us compared to before the outbreak of Covid-19. And I must admit, that I really like it. Anyhow during the last years I have been travelling a lot and due to this I have not been in my office in Itatiba for longer periods. Thus for me and my colleagues actually only little has changed now. But for sure - life and work have changed dramatically for most of our approximately 50 Vulkan do Brasil employees, who also mainly work from their homes since march 18. As today is saturday, it is quite nor

What Egypt, Mexico and Brazil have in common - a short reflection about the past, present and future of the Brazilian oil & gas industry

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Hello again all my readers here in my blog. Time is running very fast. My sensation is, that since I have started to work at my home office almost 5 months ago, the days and also the weeks have become much shorter than before. The next week day after monday seems to have become friday. Maybe this has to do with the permanent online occupation and the consecutive conferences where I participate almost all day long. But I don´t suffer from this and I do not see it negative at all. In the contrary. My strong feeling is, that my own - but also the ones of many others  - activity and productivity has increased tremendously. I wonder, which type of experiences You have made so far with this. Give us Your respective comments, please. The subject for my todays post has come into my mind during my participation in yesterdays excellent webinar " business context of Oil & Gas in Rio de Janeiro", which was perfectly organised by Hanno Erwes, Managing Director, and his wonderful team