More about the interim manager
The interim manager is an outstanding specialist with extensive expertise in sales, project and product management. He has more than 30 years of professional experience with customers from the automotive and other industrial sectors.
The industrial engineering graduate with a technical focus on mechanical engineering has dealt with very different products that require a lot of explanation (electronic fuel injection systems, automotive seat structures and mechanisms made of metal, electro-mechanical injection-moulded plastic hybrid components). He is very familiar with both global corporations and medium-sized family businesses.
He has learned his business from the ground up. He is familiar with the entire operational and strategic range of tasks across all hierarchical levels, right up to divisional management and as a member of the executive board. He delivers solutions from practice for practice. His approach is: No Rocket Science, because companies in crisis need fast, pragmatic support and not rocket science solutions that unnecessarily complicate the situation.
Sales and product management: from strategy to operational implementation
He has been an independent interim manager since 2020 and supports SMEs and corporations throughout the automotive industry and related sectors. His mandates focus on sales, project management and product management: from strategy to operational implementation. He either takes on management functions as part of a vacancy bridging role (CSO, division manager, etc.) or, as an expert and crisis manager, manages challenging special projects in these functional areas.
He has over 30 years of extensive experience in international business development and in initiating cooperation with China, Asia and other emerging markets, including the negotiation of several joint ventures and licenses. Among other things, he spent six years as an expatriate in China, where he helped to establish the location as sales manager and deputy managing director and very successfully developed the business in the region.
He has just as much experience in project management as a successful leader of countless, highly profitable projects. He was also involved in the development of the first project management manual for an employer and, as Project Director, led the team responsible for setting up a foreign location. In two companies, he was also responsible for project management, the team and the associated processes in addition to his sales manager function.
In product management, his third field of activity, he had global responsibility for product management, strategy and the Global Center of Competence for a world market-leading product line in a corporate group. This included, for example, the further development of the strategic plan and ensuring sales and profitability targets, market leadership and product and process standardization. He also successfully streamlined the redundant product portfolio as part of a post-merger integration.
His case studies reflect his extensive range of experience. Two of them deal with crisis management in sales and project management: on the one hand, the further development of the team, organization and processes and, on the other, the solution to a toxic project. Another case study describes the repositioning and streamlining of the product portfolio.
Having been shaped by his career, he is not satisfied with the status quo, but wants to develop things further. His working style is characterized by healthy ambition, combined with very good analytical skills, strategic intuition, creative drive, perseverance, reliability, precision and a high level of intercultural competence. He cultivates a cooperative management style, with cascading objectives and situational feedback, which is characterized by respect, trust, appreciation and authenticity.
