Heading into the future with a dual leadership team

At the end of 2023, our long-standing Managing Director Carsten Schmickler stepped down to take on a new position of responsibility. His successors at the helm of the company's management with effect from 1 January 2024 are Susanne Britz and Marcel Pfahl. Both come from the company's own ranks.

They were also previously members of the extended management team. In recent years, they have played a key role in the restructuring and further development of the company. After completing her engineering studies, Susanne Britz, 57, gained extensive experience in sales, purchasing, development management, production, and supply chain management. She joined Jebens in 2017 and initially worked in purchasing. For the past three years, she has been in charge of supply chain management. Marcel Pfahl, 37, joined us as a mechanical engineer in 2010. He has been responsible for the technical management of our two plants since 2019.

When Carsten Schmickler took over the company management in 2011, he found a company with a very high standard of quality, but with processes that were similar to those of any large skilled trade business. Simple welded assemblies were already being manufactured at that time, but the customer base was almost exclusively limited to the DACH region. He consistently drove the company's development into a full-service provider, with products ranging from simple flame-cut parts to ready-to-install assemblies. In addition, his declared goals were to expand the international customer base and increase transparency within the company through strictly process-orientated work. He and his team have successfully set the course for this. He also found dedicated support in Susanne Britz and Marcel Pfahl when it came to implementing the associated challenges. With the introduction of the "Jebens Synchron" process in 2018/19, the entire company was reorganised according to the Theory of Constraints. Thanks to this extensive optimisation, since then we have regularly set new records in terms of delivery reliability, throughput times and capacity.

The handover of the management baton to two experienced colleagues will ensure that this process continues to run smoothly. In their dual leadership role, Susanne Britz and Marcel Pfahl will drive the culture of innovation and future-orientation forward. Susanne Britz's area of responsibility will initially continue to focus on sales, commercial management, and supply chain management. Marcel Pfahl's focus will initially be on production, technology, and personnel, but will increasingly also include supply chain issues. Together, they want to boost business development by tapping into new customer groups and further expanding the already significantly increased export business. They want to further reinforce our premium position by focussing even more on our strengths – such as large-scale projects with complex welded assemblies and comprehensive project management through to transport. In addition, the continued future-oriented development of machines and systems is playing a central role in the joint objectives in order to keep the company on its path to success in the future and be able to react even more quickly and flexibly to customer requirements or sudden crisis-related market changes.

However, the change at the top and the associated assumption of new tasks means that the new managing directors will first have to reorganise and stabilise the teams and structures internally. Thanks to her previous work in purchasing, Susanne Britz already has close contacts with steelworks, while Marcel Pfahl has maintained contact with suppliers of plant and machinery for many years. They will visit our main customers together in the spring. Thanks to their joint management on major projects, they can build on existing contacts here, too. The dual leadership is, therefore, well positioned to continue Jebens' success story and to focus our company on the challenges that lie ahead.