Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
One day a local guy, Kjeld, appeared in my office asking for a
job. I told him that everything was outsourced except for the sales
work. Even though he had no sales experience, he begged me to give
him a chance, and he appeared to be a great seller right from
the start. When clients asked him all the technical questions, he
replied: “I don't know, but it is a very good windmill”. He sold 20
units mainly to farmers in the local area of Vendsyssel. My next
salesman spent four months to educate himself in all details, and
he sold only one unit.
11.5
The Iron Curtain
I travelled to Finland visiting Kumera and Valmet to buy gearboxes,
helped by Olaf from the industrial broker company P. N. Erichsen.
Olaf was even more creative, so he introduced the idea to the
gearbox manufacturer Penig, situated close to Karl Marx Stadt
(now Chemnitz) in the former DDR (East Germany). There could be
many stories to tell about purchasing from “die Getriebekombinat”,
the centralised East German gear industry in Berlin, represented
by Frau Weis, but let me leave that for now. The Penig gearboxes
became our victory and our defeat.
We also found our tower manufacturer in Eastern Europe—in
Poland. And based on these two major components purchased
from behind the iron curtain, we were in a very good price-
competitive position, because purchase prices in the former
communist countries were negotiable in a diferent way than what
we were used to in the West. It was also interesting to experience
how workers behind the iron curtain were working and acting.
One funny example was the Polish welders, who deliberately build
in some welding errors in each tower, for the purpose of getting
permission to go to Denmark for repairs.
However, quality in general was in top, and our suppliers
were very focused on following our western quality standards
and our quality management system. They succeeded in meeting
our standards, so we could supply high western-standard quality
for competitive prices because of Eastern European purchase. But
one of our problems was that we were not aware of the negative
image the purchase east of the Iron Curtain could create, caused
by the political black-and-white way of thinking of that time and
how it could be used by our competitors.
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