At the beginning of 2020, Harald Henning and Joerg Hackmann were appointed as new directors at PSI Metals. In the interview series, the two, together with Thomas Quinet, Managing Director since 2017, answer questions about their strategy and what dreams they have for PSI Metals.
Our project delivery capability needs to improve to match the increased complexity and functionality of projects that we now regularly implement. On the basis of our successful product strategy we have sold ever more comprehensive solutions to our customers, often promising a global multi-site strategy to harmonize their systems across the full breadth of their MES and APS processes. In recent years we have frequently struggled to execute these large and complex projects profitably and to the customer’s satisfaction. This will require changes in project management organization, better tools to support project execution, and a good system of knowledge management.
We have great experts, good experience and extensive expertise, which I feel we need to manage better in our company. This is why we are going to work on more effectively applying our resources, supporting project teams throughout the project, and improving our knowledge management.
The goal is to become more consistent, more efficient and more secure in completing our projects.
As a first initiative, we are adding two mandatory steps into our project methodology. These will serve to support the project team and provide necessary guidance and validation of the project’s design. First will be in an Orientation session before the Fit/Gap Specification, where experts familiarize the project team with the latest features and considerations of the specific functionality. Following the Fit/Gap Specification we are adding an Architectural Design Workshop to ensure that the project team plans and follows an implementation design that addresses the full business process functionality required by the customer and provided by our product.
Our customers have very high expectations of our project delivery capability when they engage us. With these changes, I believe we will help project teams meet those expectations.
In addition to your new role as Director of the Strategy Committee, you have been President of PSI Metals North America Inc. since 2011. How has our business in North America changed over the years and what can we expect for the future?
When we founded the company in 2011, we started with 3 employees and rapidly hired 4 more. We had two active customers, and our name recognition in the North American market was limited to a few companies, mainly with European roots. Today we are at 21 employees, have 20 active projects with 11 customers, and are widely recognized as the market leader in our field. PSI Metals North America is still growing rapidly, with major new projects starting, and an extremely encouraging sales pipeline. We have relocated our office to be prepared for a doubling of our staff in the next few years, and are aggressively looking for good talent.
PSI was my first employer after graduate school, and I was thrilled to find a company that has such a strong commitment to its employees as individuals and as team members. Despite disagreements and arguments, or perhaps because of the openness of dealing with them, I have always had the feeling that we are all pulling together to get through problems, and relying on each other in the end. I found in my years away from PSI that this is a rare company culture that needs to be treasured.
The execution of complex projects has been the bread and butter of PSI since the beginning. As the challenge grows in a world of digitalization, interconnectivity, and new features enabled by artificial intelligence technologies, PSI continues to support and enhance its base of production management infrastructure software while growing in capability, configurability and functionality to provide the best solutions for our customers.
