Case Study:

Founding of Several Service and Sales Locations in China for a Medium-sized Machine Construction Group

Company:

Special machine construction, batch sizes approx. 1 to 100, approx. 540 employees, approx. € 180 million annual turnover, holding structure

Initial Situation:

A medium-sized group of companies in mechanical and plant engineering is successful in the Chinese market with a commercial agency. It is planned to further expand the business and to set up and build up own sales and service branches.

Implementation:

In this group I have been Member of the Board and also directly responsible for the locations in China and Hong Kong and, due to a flat organizational structure of the holding company, provided intensive personnel support.

A total of three locations have been built on the east coast with a Chinese partner. Each site has sales and service staff and has managed certain provinces of the country. Thus, a good customer proximity and fast service assignments have been realized.

Parallel to the build up of the sites, Chinese employees in the European production sites were given intensive training over several weeks.

A service structure has been installed, in which the complete first level support was realized very quickly independently on site and if needed a second level support could be called in over Europe (often overnight).

Sales are completely independent in the standard business. For individual selected complex products or large orders, the organization can be supported locally by specialists from manufacturing sites in Europe.

Results:

The Chinese locations are extremely successful. Both major customers and numerous new customers appreciate the proximity of the European group through these offices. Know-how-intensive production of the group has remained in Europe. Individual product types for the Chinese market are being produced step by step in China as well.