Interim Project Manager

Client: Robert Bürkle GmbH, industry: special machine engineering, company size: approx. €73M revenue (2020), approx. 700 employees. area: electrical design and development, hardware and software.

Managed the Design and Development department as an interim leader.

The previous head resigned. A successor was urgently needed. To bridge the gap, they brought in a young interim manager to oversee the team and ongoing projects, assist with recruiting additional staff and a permanent head, and then hand over the team and projects to the new leader.

Challenges:

• Disciplinary and technical leadership of the department until a permanent successor is found.
• People management (8 team members): team meetings, one-on-ones, performance reviews.
• Recruiting new staff to refresh the team as the average age was too high. Goal: at least 4 new employees, ideally very young.
• Capacity planning.
• Providing an external perspective to identify optimization potential.
• Improving communication with other departments and headquarters.
• Collaboration with colleges and universities.
• Further development of existing processes and introduction of modern tools.
• Introduction of MES (Manufacturing Execution System).
• Supporting and leading various internal development projects, e.g. “Digital Twin”.

Successes:

• Introduced a version control tool “Octoplant”.
• Established team meetings every two weeks and one-on-ones every month.
• Created and rolled out company-wide a virtual machine for multiple TIA Portal versions (v13 to v18) and various developer tools.
• Conducted an external analysis and submitted numerous improvement proposals to division management, including timeline, added value, customer benefits, and cost analysis.
• Established and maintained contacts with universities and hired a working student.

Client: international mid-sized EMS company, industry: electronics manufacturing services (EMS), company size: approx. €200M revenue worldwide (2021) and approx. 3000 employees. area: product and test development / test field / test maintenance.

Head of development, project lead of a transfer project, department expansion, and recruiting a successor.

The previous development manager resigned. A successor was urgently needed. To bridge the time, a young interim manager was brought in to oversee the team and ongoing projects, support the search for a permanent development manager, and then hand over the team and projects to the new leader.

Challenges:

• Disciplinary and technical leadership of the entire development department, with 14 employees.
• Expanding the department by recruiting new employees.
• Coaching and further training for all employees.
• Capacity planning and prioritization during bottlenecks.
• Supporting the transfer project and communication with the customer.

Successes:

• Hired two new employees.
• Restructured and divided the development into four areas: product development / test development / test field / test maintenance.
• Introduced and mentored a team leader in the test field.
• Supported the transfer project from the development and test field perspective.

Family business, industry: online retail. Area: executive management.

Set up an online shop for electronics accessories.

My wife didn’t just want to be a housewife; she also wanted to start our own family business on the side. The idea for the online shop came from my hobby.

Business management, strategic purchasing, customer communication, accounting, maintenance of online, Amazon, and eBay shops. Sale of various new goods mainly through eBay and Amazon, partly through our own website; product range (constantly growing): consumer PC accessories, consumer electronics, mobile phone batteries, and much more.

Achievements:

• Built sales channels on eBay, Amazon, eBay Classifieds, and our own shop.
• Developed our own online shop based on WordPress and WooCommerce.

• Industry: services in automation, digitalization, and electronics; company size: approx. 1000 employees.
• Area: electronics and embedded software development.
• Topic: evaluating the use of embedded Linux in an industrial environment and driver programming on a test system.