Major project in no-man's land
Construction of the first three solar parks in Crimea
A well-known oligarch wanted to seize the opportunity: the country of Ukraine had just approved a lucrative feed-in tariff for renewable energies and he wanted to be the first to profit from it with huge solar parks. A manager able to construct this solar park on site out of nothing, was required for the major project: neither employees, technical know-how, materials or appropriate authorisation were available.
I was very happy to take on the position – after all it included everything I like: unclear conditions, unpredictable challenges, a high cultural component, use of my foreign language skills (in this case Russian) and a high proportion of technology in addition to cooperation with engineers, suppliers and logistics providers. In other words it was a huge black box which I slowly built up for my client so that all the information was bundled and the project advanced.
Nowadays, the solar parks generate 197.5 MW of power.
Sensitivity and technical understanding
$ 30 million savings in semiconductor production
A major strategy consultant had worked out huge saving potentials at a semiconductor manufacturer, including considerable job losses. This was impossible to avoid due to the high pressure on prices in the industry. Practical implementation was to be carried out using an internal project manager who, as it turned out, handed in his resignation at short notice.
I took over the position and therefore several major tasks: I had to distance myself from major consultation and win the trust of the employees, evaluate the improvement suggestions using technical understanding and prioritise them with the company management, develop a Plan B just in case as a sparring partner, monitor the implementation of the individual measures and regularly discuss these with the CEO and the COO.
The project was successful, and savings of $30 million were made. In the end there were no operational job losses thanks to close consultation with the works council, attractive severance pay and part-time retirement.
From manufacturer to solution provider
Swiss mechanical and facility engineering company has to make fundamental changes
For many years the company played a major role in the machinery market for the manufacture of wafers, solar cells and modules. The sector was booming, which meant there was hardly any time to set up alternative business models. Once the market collapsed there was suddenly a difficult cultural necessity: the company had to change from being a pure vendor to being a developer of customer solutions.
This was a problem with which I was familiar with from previous projects and one which called on one of my passions: changing the way of thinking for entire teams, departments and organisations – in other words creating a new culture in the best sense of the word.
Together with the team I developed a new modular system which enabled customers to receive highly individual solutions, and also sensitised the employees to active enquiries regarding customer problems and to actually solving these using the modular system.