90s Recollection Part 6

Heading into the late 90’s, I returned to Magna.  Only this time around, I worked for them in Europe. 

Magna had just acquired a few European plants, mostly located in Germany, Austria, Belgium and England.  It was a quiet undertaking and most acquisitions were integrated into their existing North American groups.  They basically mimicked their North America way in Europe.

Initially, doing things the North American way was quite a challenge.  Changing a culture is always complex and very sensitive.

The European plants were unionized.  In fact, they had multiple unions under one roof.  Both blue and white collars had their own unions, with multiple types of unions available to them. 

One can always argue whether a union is beneficial and to whom.  One can even say unions are a handicap to management; however, if you play your cards right, a union can be your greatest asset.  For those that have never worked in Europe, I’d like to add that company officials meet with senior union reps monthly to review their monthly financial statements.  This is not done in North America.  In my opinion, it should be done, as it allows the union to better understand the company’s position and avoids the risk of being driven down to the ground by the union.

What a surprise it was for me when I was asked to relocate to Belgium.  The plant was situated in Braine L’Alleud (close to Waterloo, where Napolean lost the Battle of Waterloo) and it felt like I had just done a full circle in my career, as this is where I was working when Magna approached me to work for them in Canada.  (At that time the plant was owned by a German company and was called Happich SA).  What a coincidence that Magna had just acquired this plant!

The Braine L’Alleud plant was losing money, had quality issue and was unable to supply customers on time.  Jan Boeckx was the General Manager and he was an amazing union negotiator that always relied on me to play the role of devil’s advocate. 

I even got nicknamed the Canadian Cowboy by the plant employees.  Many of the people I worked with earlier in my career were still there and told me that I had Americanized myself too much over the 14 years I was gone from Belgium. 

Within one year, we turned the plant around.  We broke even in 1998 and made a good profit in 1999.  Not bad for the North American way; however, this would never have been achievable without the amicable relation we had with our union.

We worked together as a team.  Our main goal was customer satisfaction, shareholder satisfaction and employee satisfaction, resulting in job security.

While it’s been several years, there are some names that have remained in my memories.  I’d like to thank these people for enabling me to accomplish the mandate that was set by head office.  Thank you to:

·      Daniel Zonka (Production Manager)

·      Claude Schuler (Continuous Improvement, Tooling Engineering)

·      Ludovic Seydoux (Product & Process Development & Industrialization)

·      Ralf Rimkus (Expanding Seals, Product Tooling & Production)

·      Danielle Imbert (Human Resources Manager)

·      Pascal Trimmer (Sales & Marketing)

·      Cecile Schuler (Sales & Marketing)

For those that I’ve forgotten by name or whose name I have misspelled, please understand it’s been many years.

In addition, I’d like to thank Jan’s wife Laurence for writing some amazing speeches for Jan.  Those were definitely memorable!