Stefan A. Schmidt

Supporting customers in South of Europe in their projects for electrification of commercial vehicles. Countries covered are Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, North Africa and Middle East.

H+S added the product family of radar sensors to the RF portfolio. The task is to develop the market for Radar Sensors, Board-2-Board RF connectors and HighSpeed Data Transmission. Sales was developped from 1 digit to three digit million EUR by nomination of project with leading Tier1s.

Team lead of the sales team for LF Products in the market Heavy Vehicles

Develop new markets for a) existing products "Silicone switches automotive" and b) identify new products for the existing market "automotive". a) New Markets of Consumer were entered with a project win of illuminated coffee machine switches with graphics on surface in a 3 Mio CHF project. b) silicone in "external", visible solutions were developped in EV for electrical charging switches Daimler and Audi with ca 5 Mio CHF pa. A Door handle application on new Ford F150 with Sales of over 1 Mio CHF.

Business Development of Automotive Sales in Germany. Focus on German OEMs (BMW, Daimler, Audi, VW) and Tier1s with German HQ (f.e. Preh, TRW, Continental, Marquardt, Valeo and others). Management of these accounts globally . Advise and consulting OEMs in switch technology (see "click standard from Audi"). Win of multi-million projects like BMW (Motorbike-handle switch), Valeo (Daimler window lifter), Marquardt (Daimler seat + head rest adjustment), Preh (seat adjustment). CAGR of 10%++ .

Consulting for foreign companies, mainly asian based, for entry of automotive and industrial market in Europe. Succesful market entry for clients in PCB and PCBA.

Development of the automotive market in Asia (China, India and mainly Korea) plus responsibility for the customers GM and Ford in Europe. Win of a 100 Mio EUR business with GM for air intake control systems. Development and first bsuiness with the indian customers Ashok Leyland, Maruti Suzuki, Mahindra and mainly Tata. Strong development in South Korea with projects from Kia and Hyundai with a +10% increase in turnover to previous numbers.

Full P+L responsibility. Management of the team of 5 and external ressources. Head hunting in the automotive engineering market with focus on acquisition and transfer of whole engineering teams. Successful transfer of numerous engineers and two teams. Search specialist for niche market of Patent lawyers. Successful search projects of a two digit number of specialists.

Development and restructuring of Sales USA plus responsibility for the HF-antenna Cable sales from automatic production in Germany with a team of 5 specialists in Germany and 2 in the US. Restructure of US Sales. Annual turnover responsibility of 45 Mio DM. Significant project win as single source antenna cables with value 11M DM for Delphi Europe. Restructuring US sales with elimination of existing representative, installation of own sales force and win of Ford antenna project 2,5 M DM with 5 yrs life

Business Development of the market "Automotive Connectors" in Germany and Central Europe. The HQ served the OEM Ford exclusively with a round pin -connector solution and my task was to find customers and identify projects aside of this OEM at Tier 1 and Tier 2's. Project wins were f.e.: Bosch ("breathing", intelligent Lambda Sensor connector) with more than 5 Mio DM pa. (still used today in BMW Lamda sensors), Siemens 137 way Navistar connector (with project life of 4 yrs and 1 Mio DM p.a.).

Design, Sales and Project Management for unique robotics, assembly- and measuring machines for automotive customers like Daimler, Porsche, Getrag, ZF, MANN Hummel, Knecht and SWF. Project were f.e. income control for oil filters by measuring the flow at different temperature or high speed assembly of automatic clutches. Introduction and implementation of additional business field "representative" for measuring equipment of Zeiss Jena. The company developed from 1 to 11 Mio DM revenue pa. during my time.

Implementation of quality standard according to Ford Q1/Q101 (predesessor of DIN ISO 16949) plus introduction of "worker self control" in the new set up production plant for Automotive connectors and terminals. First customers Ford and Fiat. Intensive interaction and training of the workforce in this at that time newly introduced quality system to make them accept and adapt to the concept of statistic process control. Rewarded by "A"-status in the Ford Audit.

Marketing und Vertrieb

Automatisierung and Produktion