About Me
IF IT IS THE OTHER WAY AROUND, HUGE POTENTIAL REMAINS UNTAPPED.
ABOUT RAINER MÜLLER
Rainer Mueller`s industrial career started already with his university dual studies/co-op program at DHBW university in Karlsruhe, Germany, as well as at different sites of the BMW corporation. After graduation Rainer joined Michelin tire company where his first leadership experiences were with positions in the production environment. Later at Johnson Controls – today Adient and Visteon – his career includes roles as plant manager, operations director and director continuous improvement. After joining TE Connectivity as Vice President Operations EMEA, Rainer was promoted to COO of the global automotive business unit and went on to be the VP Digital Transformation.
After 30 years of leadership experience in different multinational companies, with a highly dynamic and fast changing environment, Rainer offers his knowledge and experience in Operations, Supply Chain, Digitalization, Leadership and General Management as a consultant to different companies in various industries.
As an independent consultant Rainer is committed to helping clients be more successful, through two kind of services:
CONSULTING & COACHING
ABOUT ME
- 30+ years’ experience in the automotive industry always with top players and focused on Operations & Supply Chain, as well as Digitalization
- 25+ years’ leadership experience on all hierarchical levels – from production manager up to member of the operating committee of a business unit with +6 billion USD turn-over.
- Managing Director of a German entity with +1 billion USD of sales and 4.000+ employees.
- Expatriate assignments in France, Slovakia and Switzerland.
- Experience in leading of large organizations with more than 20 sites and more than 25.000 people.
- Many years of experience with and in global networks resulting in high versatility and ability to adapt.
- Intense global business management and close collaboration with people from all different cultures around the world (i.e. Japan, China, Thailand, Korea, India, Europe Union, Brazil, Mexico, USA, …)
MY PASSION:
RECOGNIZE AND DEVELOP PEOPLE’S POTENTIAL!
INDUSTRIAL EXPERIENCE
- Automotive – a leading branch and generator of numerous industrial standards
- Electronics – Innovation as basis of continued growth
- Electronics Components – highly dynamic business boosted by state-of-the-art production technology
- Interior & Seating – mastering shorter and shorter product life cycles and ever-increasing complexity
- Tires and Tire Components – highest requirements in parallel to extreme margin pressure
SKILLS & COMPETENCIES
KEY PROJECTS
DIGITAL
Development of a digital strategy for a complete business unit with more than 30 sites globally: The focus was an end-to-end transformation, including not only product engineering and production, but manufacturing engineering, quality, procurement and customer interfaces as well.
STRATEGY
Revision of the production strategy (what, where, how) and restructuring of the regional (EMEA) respectively the global footprint with up to 25 plants: Basis of the exercise was a detailed analysis of the production portfolio and the competencies at each site, the cost for production and transport, as well as the market trends.
M&A
Conducting the Operational Due Diligence and leading the respective integration activities: In the concrete example, this included the thorough analysis of the three sites of an acquisition target and the unveiling and rating of risks and opportunities in case of a deal.
After acquisition, the newly added plants as well as the relevant central units had to be seamlessly integrated into the existing supply chain.
PLANTS
Restructuring of a German site and bargaining of a social plan:
In consequence of a significant volume transfer, the capacity of the plant with more than 300 employees had to be reduced by roughly thirty percent. Hence a social plan had to be negotiated with the employee representatives and the unions. The final contract what had been signed off by all parties, had been well accepted by both the employees and the business unit leadership.
Launching a greenfield plant in Slovakia:
The new plant had been built up from scratch and was brought to full capacity with more than 400 employees in not more than 18 months. Next to all negotiations with public bodies and other internal and external stakeholders, the successful negotiation of a multi-million grant contract with the Slovak Government was also part of the scope.
PROCESS
Leading of various cost cutting projects at a German site: Key aspect was the efficiency increase through process improvements in production, and the significant streamlining of all indirect areas and the overhead. Overall, a cost reduction of more than thirty percent had been achieved.
Launching production systems on plant level:
Productions systems inspired by the Toyota were successfully implemented at various German and Eastern European sites – either as development activity for existing plants or as part of the launch program for a new plant.