About the founder of the company PowerKont
Details about my professional career - a few words
Over 25 years in the electrical industry:
I was studying heavy current engineering in Kiel, a city at the baltic sea and finished as B.Sc. in heavy current engineering in 1989.
From April 1989 until November 1992 I was working at Hoechst CeramTec AG in Wunsiedel (todays Lapp Insulator GmbH). Starting as application engineer in the first weeks, I became very soon the product manager for Silicon Rubber insulators. It was great, that the company was giving me the chance to take over hughe responsibility in such young years. Together with the production, design and sales team, I was able to increase the anual sales from a couple of hundred thousand DM to above 10 million DM. Also the challenge for intensive worldwide travelling was a great experience to me. The fact, that in those days also my knowledge in QM-systems was strongly intensified, helped me a lot for my future challenges. More information about that time you can find here.
From Dezember 1992 until February 1993 I was working as marketing manager at Blocher Elektromotoren GmbH &Co KG in Dresden, shortly after the wall came down. A great challenge to take over a team of 18 people, and giving them a chance to learn about marketing strategies in the western world. Unfortunately, only a short time engagement as the company was suffering badly as all their russian markets broke together due to the use of west german mark as currency over night. However, even in the short time, we managed to get flyers published and sold some prototypes of the new invented elevator motor. If you like, have a look here.
From March 1993 until June 2001 I was working as business unit leader with total profit/loss responsibility for OHTL Fittings and substation material at Pfisterer Elektrotechnische Spezialartikel GmbH & Co KG in Stuttgart. I took over the responsibility of an almost like dead product group. Within a few years, this business unit grew rapidly from about 5,5 Million DM to about 34 Million DM anual turnover and became one of the biggest within the company. Complete team restructuring, new working processes, outsourcing of production and starting with professional project management were necessary steps to go. Finally this business unit with a new dynamic built up team of 22 employees, was dealing with materials from medium voltage to ultra high voltage, from safety and earthing products to complete material packages in worldwide projects. In this time I was also responsible for internal audits of the QM system of the headquarter, was writing a lot of directives in the QM manual. In the same time I also became the regional manager for southern africa for the complete product portfolio of the company. So to say, three jobs in one person. A time which was an impressive stage in my life, and I learnt very much about leadershipment and restructuring of companies, project management and commercial aspects of the business, as well as widening my product portfolio in an unbelivable manner. Some more impressions about that time you can find here.
From July 2001 I was starting with founding PowerKont and also working as independent consulting engineer. A very interesting step in my life, which I never would like to miss. It was in those days not that easy to get finance for building up a new company, however the arrangements with my previous employer plus my own capital base enabled me to go that paths. It's not that common in Germany to run your own company, especially in the energy industry. However, I am proud to have gone through this and enjoy my several companies and activities very much, and sometimes I cannot really believe, that this is working for more than 10 years now already.
Anyhow, if the right challenge would come, I still wouldn't have any problem, to become an employee again. My company is grown up, and there are enough people involved, who could take care in the future. So it might not be surprising, you can find me right now working within the Eltel Group, trying to help to get the business unit power transmission prequalified to German customers, a real challenge.
My jobs gave me the opportunity to travel around the world, there is nearly no country, which I haven't visited. I could meet a lot of different people, learnt a lot about different cultures and approaches to face challenges. Together with the skills in psychology and commercial aspects of companies, but also how to manage projects, I was always able to find the answeres needed and learnt a lot about different technical approaches of different area's in the world regarding the transport of electrical energy. Today the knowledge gained goes far beyond single product application towards deep understanding of complete systems in the electrical energy world.
