From pump planning to the CIO's remit

Mandate

Make plant systems, security and enterprise data dependable enough for customers, auditors and the supervisory board to rely on.

Outcomes

• Linked pressure-test and foundry heat records to valve serial numbers, with 92 per cent of certificates issued electronically by mid-2025
• Closed 27 remote routes into the plants and replaced them with one logged, time-limited route
• Brought 39 key suppliers onto a portal covering most purchased-material spend

Decisions in context

The title changed in January 2022, but the more important change was the reporting line. The supervisory board had begun to ask about plant-network risk, and the chief executive wanted those answers from the person responsible rather than relayed through finance. I lead five managers covering business applications, plant systems, infrastructure and security, data and reporting, and the service desk. My budget is approved annually with the chief executive and chief financial officer, and change projects above €250,000 go to the management team with a stated alternative. I present to the supervisory board and its audit committee twice a year as an executive and hold no seat on either. The three cases on this site come from this period. Each required a colleague to give up an order of priorities or a convenience that had served them well.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; seeking a first compatible supervisory-board seat alongside it.

Mandate

Combine the central IT, business-application and plant-systems teams into one function and stabilise the new ERP system.

Outcomes

• Integrated the acquired Slovenian actuator plant onto group ERP within fourteen months
• Moved remote working for 420 office staff onto managed devices during 2020
• Reduced unplanned ERP downtime from 31 hours in 2018 to six hours in 2021

Decisions in context

This appointment joined three teams that had grown up separately and did not always trust one another. Plant systems had reported to production, business applications to finance, and infrastructure to a small central office. I kept their specialist knowledge but gave them one service desk, one change calendar and one budget. The acquisition of the Celje actuator plant in 2019 tested the arrangement early. Its staff ran a local ERP and an assembly-tracking system that worked well for their products, and I moved the financial and order processes onto group ERP while leaving shop-floor tracking in place. In 2020, office staff moved to remote working in weeks, which exposed how many plant-network connections existed without documentation. That discovery began the remote-access work I completed as CIO, and it changed how I reported security risk to the chief financial officer.

Reason for the move

Role redefined as chief information officer reporting to the chief executive.

Mandate

Replace a twenty-year-old ERP system across the Wels plant and the foundry without interrupting customer deliveries.

Outcomes

• Delivered the replacement in two stages, in 2016 and 2017, within 6 per cent of budget
• Kept on-time delivery above 90 per cent through both cutovers
• Recorded every business-rule decision with its named owner for later audit

Decisions in context

I was asked to lead the ERP replacement because I knew the shop floor, not because I had run an ERP programme before. That gap was real, and I relied on the integration partner's project manager for the method while I took responsibility for the decisions. The hardest of them were not technical. Whether a foundry heat should be treated as a batch or as an attribute of each casting affected quality, costing and dispatch differently, and each function argued its case well. I put those choices to the managers who would live with them and kept a written record of who decided and why. We split the go-live into two stages, which cost about €400,000 more than a single cutover but kept deliveries above 90 per cent on time. The chief financial officer accepted that extra cost after seeing the delivery risk set out.

Reason for the move

Appointed head of IT when the central, plant and application teams were combined.

Mandate

Replace paper travellers in machining and assembly with a shop-floor execution system.

Outcomes

• Connected machining and assembly areas to the execution system in five stages
• Reduced lost or incomplete job travellers from about 4 per cent of orders to under 0.5 per cent
• Trained 140 operators and supervisors with plant colleagues as co-trainers

Decisions in context

I came to Wels from a die-casting plant in Bavaria, and the first lesson was that a valve plant is not a high-volume casting line. Orders were smaller, variants more numerous and rework more common, so the screens I had used before did not fit. I reported to the plant director, which meant my work was judged by supervisors who had a shift to finish. We moved one area at a time and did not start the next until the previous one had stopped producing corrections after each shift. Paper travellers stayed in parallel until the error rate justified removing them. Some supervisors were sceptical throughout, and two areas took longer than planned. By 2014 the system covered machining and assembly; the test benches and foundry were left for later, a gap that mattered in 2022.

Reason for the move

Asked to lead the ERP replacement because of shop-floor process knowledge.

Mandate

Configure the plant's first execution system for part-level traceability required by automotive customers.

Outcomes

• Configured traceability for 22 die-casting cells
• Redesigned operator screens after a first go-live slipped by a quarter
• Reduced the time to answer a customer traceability request from days to under four hours

Decisions in context

Lauterbrink's customers wanted to know, for any casting, which die, which shift and which process values had produced it. I joined as a systems engineer to configure the casting cells and became team lead in 2008. The work taught me about timing: a die temperature written down ten minutes late proved nothing, so we captured values from the machines wherever we could. It also taught me humility. Our first go-live slipped by a quarter because the screens had been designed by engineers at desks and were unusable by operators in heavy gloves. I spent two weeks on night shifts watching, and we rebuilt them. The 2009 downturn cut volumes sharply and paused part of the programme, and I learnt to sequence work so that a pause left something useful behind. Half the cells were finished and in daily use when it came.

Reason for the move

Moved to Austria for a plant-systems role with broader responsibility.

Mandate

Sequence machining orders around casting arrivals and move planning from a wall board onto the ERP planning module.

Outcomes

• Moved weekly machining sequencing onto the planning module
• Introduced a daily casting-arrival check with purchasing
• Cut orders waiting for incomplete material from about 70 to under 30

Decisions in context

My first job was to decide what each machining centre should work on next, when castings from outside foundries arrived late or not at all. The planning office trusted a magnetic wall board more than the ERP planning module, and they had reasons: the board was corrected by everyone, the system by no one. I moved sequencing onto the system gradually, only as fast as foremen would update it at the machine. A daily check with purchasing on casting arrivals did more for the schedule than any software setting. I had no authority over purchasing or production and learnt to change things by showing evidence to the people who did. By 2005 I wanted to work on the systems themselves rather than plan around them, which took me to Bavaria. The planning manager supported the move and later sent me two of her graduates.

Reason for the move

Joined a die-casting plant to work on shop-floor systems directly.