Olaf Henning, Corporate Executive Vice President & General Manager Aftermarket at MAHLE, and Christian Küchlin, Head of Customer Care EMEA provided a general overview on the company and an insight into their different business units.

Mr. Henning started the evening talking about Mahle’s heritage in combustion engines and talked about their exciting expansion into hybrid and electric vehicles. While they still plan on remaining a global leader in combustion engines until the last one is produced, they have ambitious plans to become world leaders in the automotive industry. With an annual sales revenue of USD12,8 billion they go where their customers are and stay at the cutting-edge of automotive technology. Mr. Küchlin stressed the importance of their customers and stated, “You should always know what your customers are looking for.”
Christian Küchlin talked about Mahle’s ongoing digitalization and change management efforts. He said, “if you always go right it may be difficult to go left,” meaning that they are always figuring out the best ways to communicate with their employees. When it comes to discussing their digital culture and vision with Mahle’s employees Mr. Küchlin said, “it all comes down to communication.” Mr. Henning added, “change management is always coming from the top.  You need a Digitalization Sponsor if you want digitalization efforts to be successful.”
After talking about digitalization, Mr. Küchlin went into detail about project management when Mr. Henning chimed in and joked with the MBA students, “remember when you have a project you really want to work on, come to me with a plan… and show me the money!” In other words, go into details on how to execute your plan, how much it will cost and how profitable it could become for the company before approaching management with it.  Afterwards, the MBA students asked more about Mahle’s visions for the future, their business strategy and agile development at Mahle. It was indeed a very good start to what will be another wonderful semester at Pforzheim University’s MBA program!

Text: Rupert Rivera III, MBA class of 2020
Photos: MBA office