We didn`t start the fire - My great & highly successful experience in working together with my friend & colleague Ferdinand
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 induce the digital transformation of our whole Brazilian company.
You see - we keep going on very busy and with lots of very exciting and challenging activities.
Today I will present to You one of our management team members, whom I consider a key player and contributer within all these activities. Ferdinand Senske, Vice President Operations of Vulkan do Brasil, and I have met a little more than 10 years ago for the first time and since then we have continuously worked together, made friends and have had lots of fun, suffering and success together.
During 2010, after my return to Brazil from Mexico, where I have been living together with my familly for in total 6 years and where I was responsible for - one after the other - 2 first class, technology and global markets leading, German automotive supplier companies and where I had constructed and started up a big assembly plant for interieur parts for all North American car makers, I had signed contract as Interim General Manager with the German Oystar (former IWKA) Group, a packaging machinery manufacturer, for their Brazilian subsidiary Fabrima Maquinas Automáticas in Guarulhos, Sao Paulo.
This was a real fire brigade engagement because of the extremely difficult (to be true: bad) situation and state of the Brazilian company and of the whole global mother group. My mission was, to keep this company alive and running until somebody could be found for buying it. A real nightmare job, but very interesting and challenging.
On my first day at Fabrima in Guarulhos, freshly arrived from Recife, where I lived together with my familly at that time, I got to know with Ferdinand, who was the Technical Director there since a couple of years and kept the factory alive. During our first joint walk through the factory, Ferdinand and I developped a good "chemistry" and thus laid the foundation for our long colaboration and friendship.
Ferdinand, after his studies of engineering in Sao Paulo and an intensive training in business administration had made large and deep experience during many years as Production Manager and as Industrial Director at different Brazilian subsidiaries of highly successful German industrial companies like f.e. SEW and Beckum, before he finally joined Fabrima (then still belonging to the German IWKA Group) as Technical Director during 2006.
I must admit, that I attribute great part of my own professional career success to the excelent companions and team members, which I had the luck and the talent to find and to join during my own professional journey at all the different companies and places on different continents, for which I have been working so far. And Ferdinand during the last 10 years has been a very strong supporter and contributer. He has a wonderful theoretical and practicle (!) technical background and experience and did never since he left the university 35 years ago stop to learn and to assimilate new experiences, technologies and know how. I think, that`s the "magic formula" for the unbelievable capacity, strength, leadership, respect and recognition, which he enjoys from all who know him and work together with him.
When we managed finally to get Fabrima sold to it`s new owner, Ferdinand and I left this company. I was faster than Ferdinand in finding a new job and invited him, to join me at GEA Heat Exchangers Brazilian company and factory in Franco da Rocha, Sao Paulo, where I took over responsability as Managing Director in August 2011.
At GEA HX Ferdinand became our Director of Operations and during our joint time there, he - in evening and weekend classes - qualified himself further during a post graduate training at the renowned Mauá Institute of Technology in Sao Paulo as an International Welding Engineer.
Our time at GEA Heat Exchangers was a real battle time. This was exactly the period of the total explosion (first) and total collapse (3-4 years later) of the whole Brazilian oil & gas industry, when almost all Brazilian EPC companies (Odebrecht, Galvão Queiroz, Alusa, .....) and Petrobras as their main contractor got involved into massive, huge, billionary corruption scandals. Hard times for honest, clean supplier companies like ours, which almost 100% depended on orders from the oil & gas industry. This was the time, where huge customer orders very often like troyan horses brought huge financial losses into the supplier companies. Thanks God we lurched through all these troubled waters unharmed. In the contrary - at the end of 2014, when at first I and soon after me Ferdinand left GEA Heat Exchangers, our Brazilian company just closed the best financial year of it`s more than 40 years old history. We left this company with our heads up and very proud on our joint - together with all other GEA Heat Exchangers do Brasil colleagues - success.
Since the beginning of 2015 (I started there during September 2014; until the end of 2014 employed by both companies - GEA do Brasil and Vulkan do Brasil - as their MD) Ferdinand has been employed @ Vulkan do Brasil as our Vice President Operations and we have since then - together will all other Vulkan do Brasil colleagues - completely restructured our company, the factory and executed successfully 1000 exciting and highly successful projects, internally and for our customers allover Brazil, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, in the US, in Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.
The management team of Vulkan do Brasil, which I have set up in Itatiba before year`s end 2014 continues unchanged with all members still in the same functions. Never change a winning team !
I hope this was interesting and maybe even helpful for You as a general experience sharing. Looking forward to Your own experience sharing, questions and constructive comments, which I love so much and welcome so highly.
No better song and video to close this post than the Avengers retake of Billy Joel`s great "We didn`t start the fire" song:
Enjoy the - depending on where You are located around the globe - more or less long resp. short rest of this (at least here in Vinhedo, Sao Paulo, Brazil) wonderful weekend.
See You again back here in my blog upon the publication of my next post. Take care! Stay happy & healthy! Have fun and success!
Hello Klaus,
ReplyDeleteI'm honored wiht your comments, and working together has been really very pleasant, constant chalhenges but also constant successes, you have the personal capacity to use and develop what each person has as best, and the result, you bilt a wonderful team wiht our colleagues at Vulkan.Transparity, sincerity, honesty, reliability, dinamism of ideas, ability to develop talents, and
many other caracteristics , make you the leader we like to work together.
Thank so much, Ferdinand, for Your very kind words. If people, who You really deeply know, esteem and admire, give You nice compliments, their words count double or even triple. Respect and true recognition, that’s what we all most desire and appreciate.
DeleteFerdinand Senske
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