The Vamea Group specialises in toolmaking and parts manufacturing. With eight locations, they consolidate extensive expertise in the product areas of tool and mold making, metal processing, plastics technology, assembly production, and standard components. They are a reliable manufacturing partner from the first concept to series production, serving a wide range of industries.
Our colleagues Dennis Tanke, Group Director, and Dr. Irena Schierjott, Group Director, had the chance to talk to Karsten Trautmann, Chairman of the Board of Vamea Group AG regarding his view on current challenges leaders are facing.ö
Companies and their executives must deal with more complex areas of responsibility. These include macroeconomic influences, new and rapidly emerging customer demands, digitalisation including AI, the desire for individualised products, the war for talent, population aging and the associated aging of the workforce structure, data protection for production, personnel, customer, and consumer data, and the overarching theme of sustainability.
This means that executives must accomplish more complex tasks in an ever faster time. To handle this enormous challenge daily, executives need a new mindset—away from hierarchical thinking towards "coaching the workforce."
Executives today must make companies more resilient and foster innovation to ensure long-term business success. In our companies, this means that processes, products, etc. must be continually questioned to offer customers precise solutions. Additionally, as a diversified corporate group, we benefit from accessing different industry channels and technologies. This diversity enables us to respond more quickly to new trends and seize opportunities.
Executives must also "learn" to listen better to customers, constantly question themselves, and ensure that needs are met:
It means companies need to engage much more with their own business and the data within it, and have less "fear" of unearthing their own treasures. Executives can only make decisions if they are clear that the figures are correct and can be built upon them. Master data is the "backbone" of every company and thus the basis for decision-making.
For us at Vamea Group, the group-wide analysis of this data offers a special opportunity: We can identify synergies between companies, diversify our portfolio precisely, and improve process efficiency at the same time.
The robotics and automation industry offers executives a unique opportunity for this. Executives today can design their system concepts more flexibly than ever and respond more quickly and flexibly to external shocks through cutting-edge technology.
As Chairman of the Board of Vamea Group, it is my daily task to engage with our customers so that processes based on this can be standardised and made more efficient within the corporate group. I can do this, for example, by using AI to analyse my corporate, production, and sales processes or by implementing a comprehensive traceability concept.
Employees today must also think in terms of solutions—the so-called turnkey projects—and not just individual products. This is exactly where an advantage of our corporate group lies: Through the constant exchange of our specialised subsidiaries, we can bundle complete solution packages and share knowledge across company boundaries.
Away from a rigid—to an agile—customer tailored company. This means that executives must engage not only better with their customers but also with their own employees. The executive becomes the coach and deploys the right employees at the right time. Our decentralised but connected structure within the Vamea Group allows us to deploy employees flexibly and across locations in projects—where their strengths offer the greatest added value.
In practice, executives are partially prevented by excessive bureaucracy & strict regulations from creating a flexible and barrier-free environment.
The protection of employees is important—without ifs and buts. It inevitably leads to motivated executives and employees being slowed down. An additional side effect is rising costs in sales, R&D, and production.
Also, executives must not hide behind data protection and should use it to rethink business processes. How quickly this can change is shown by political developments in the USA and China, where companies are rapidly re-aligning themselves based on political framework conditions and adjusting corporate structures.
For a diversified group like the Vamea Group, it is essential to anticipate these developments early on and derive entrepreneurial opportunities from them. The diversity of our subsidiaries provides the necessary scope for action.
I am happy to give an example from practice: My son sees an influencer on the internet presenting a new product to him. The hype starts and the product must be bought. These hypes are getting shorter every year and companies must adjust to them. Employee, product, and development processes must be aligned accordingly.
Thank you, Karsten, for this interesting conversation. This goes very much in line with what we are dealing with at MU.
The diverse requirements for executives described here are a crucial factor that also influences our daily work at MU. The selection of the right leaders is of immense importance to our clients to continue achieving optimal business results under challenging conditions. With our scientifically proven executive search approach (with a success rate of >90%), we provide our clients with a substantial competitive advantage. Additionally, we offer comprehensive support not only in traditional executive search but also in leadership advisory, thereby strengthening our clients holistically—and worldwide.