Manufacturing Magazine April 2018 | Page 109

“ AS WE WERE STARTING FROM SCRATCH WE ONLY HAD A VERY WEAK DEFINITION OF WHAT THE SEPARATION WOULD BE , AND I ALONE COULD NOT DEFINE WHAT WAS THE INTELLECTUAL DATA OF AIRBUS AND WHAT WAS THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF THE CARVE OUT . THIS WAS SOMETHING THAT HAD TO BE CLARIFIED FROM THE BEGINNING ”

– Steffen Schreck , CIO
EUROPE to project execution .”
As with the forming of any company , this is a continuous process . When the decision was made to separate and carve out into a new independent organisation , the company set itself a timeframe of sixteen months .
Sixteen months to separate , build and set out into the market is no small feat , but HENSOLDT enters 2018 as a fully-fledged organisation with more than 4,300 employees worldwide , 1,000 patents and a turnover of more than € 1bn ($ 1.24bn USD ).
But despite this success , Schreck concedes that the journey took some time to get going in the first instance and this was a product of having to work with and ultimately convince various different stakeholders .
“ Separation takes time ,” he says . “ This meant we had to convince lawyers , convince the business managers and the shareholders that there is a clear business case here and one that will result in great success moving forward .”
The way in which Schreck overcame this and was effectively given the greenlight was simple – communication . But as a technologist , someone who
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