Compleo Charging Solutions AG
Interview with Gerrit Kehrenberg, Head of Purchasing at Compleo Charging Solutions AG
Compleo is on a strong growth path thanks to e-mobility. How is your purchasing department coping with this?
The basis of successful purchasing is a strong team. However, teamwork and maintaining team spirit are a real challenge under the conditions of corona rules and working in a home office. Nevertheless, we are working on optimally coordinating with each other as a team even in digital collaboration and maintaining team spirit even remotely. This is very important because the challenges are enormous in view of the difficult procurement markets and our growth. From my 23 years of experience in procurement in a wide variety of companies and industries, I can say that I have never experienced such challenging environmental conditions. The consequence will be that we will massively expand our team with additional buyers to better manage suppliers or innovation partners and to strategically equip purchasing for the future.
We are examining the extent to which we can develop suppliers into innovation partners. These strategically important suppliers are important factors for our growth. In doing so, we follow the total cost of ownership approach. We choose suppliers not just on the basis of price, but take a holistic view of the collaboration. Compleo is pursuing many new innovative projects and needs suppliers who can also support us with technical know-how at the appropriate speed and quality.
The special feature at Compleo is that purchasing is linked to the Chief Technical Officer.
This means that strategic purchasing and key suppliers are involved in product development right from the start. This shows how important purchasing and suppliers are to Compleo. To manage these strategic suppliers in the best possible way, we need a strong purchasing team with sufficient capacity. This helps us to further develop our innovative strength in collaboration with our suppliers and to ensure that material cost targets are sufficiently appreciated very early in the product development process.
Keyword digitization, where do you stand in this respect?
For us, digitization is part of our growth strategy. That’s why we started this process a long time ago. We are currently introducing a new ERP system that will help us in the long term in terms of compliance and audit security, but also process efficiency. Two years ago, Compleo employed one hundred people, but now it employs over six hundred. That’s why we’re tackling all the issues at full speed and still see a lot of potential.
How do you counter supply bottlenecks in the field of electronics?
This is an issue that has been with us for some time and will remain with us for the rest of this year. At the moment, we are solving it with an enormous amount of effort. Our number one internal priority is security of supply. To this end, we are working closely with product development.
If parts or components are not available, we check internally and with suppliers to see if there are technical alternatives that we can use. If no alternatives are found, we must consider how high the cost of a redesign would be.
To find suitable suppliers in Asia, we have a colleague in China to support us. She helps us to find local sources of supply. From time to time, we also must buy something from a broker, but at very high additional cost. Supply bottlenecks mean intensive communication on the supplier side, unfortunately also escalations and many discussions with existing suppliers. This requires manpower.
However, we are also taking advantage of potential synergies from the acquisitions of the former wallbe GmbH and the former innogy eMobility Solutions GmbH. These companies develop similar products to ours, but in some cases have different suppliers. This allows us to explore and establish new suppliers as part of the integration of these companies.
What does the market offer in terms of finding good buyers?
I think that we are a very interesting employer because of our growth, our innovative strength and our industry. When I look at the applications we receive, this is confirmed. We get a lot of applications, but because of the demanding environment of our industry, we have to pay particularly close attention to the qualifications of the applicants. Despite the shortage of skilled workers, however, we don’t want to hire at any price – even though building up the team is a top priority. For us, it is important that applicants fit into the team and the company both professionally and personally. A willingness to change is also very important – especially as our environment is very demanding and dynamic. New employees that we hire meet precisely these requirements.
Supply Chain Act and ESG – Are you already prepared or how to manage the issue as well?
The Supply Chain Act is also a high priority. But even if these requirements did not exist, sustainability plays a central role for Compleo. We also rely on external experts who accompany us and have helped us to create a Code of Conduct. The aim is for all suppliers to accept this as binding before the end of 2022.
As a listed stock corporation, we also have a particular obligation to address the issue of sustainability. The strategy is currently being developed and will be published in the second quarter of 2022. We are also working on an ESG rating, which will also be produced in the second quarter of this year.
The supply chain, i.e., checking the sustainability of both direct suppliers and upstream suppliers, is comparatively easy for us because we have many suppliers in Germany and other European countries. But there, too, we have to ensure that the sustainability criteria are met. Conflict materials are not used at Compleo. But also on the subject of REACH and RoHS, suppliers have to confirm to us that they comply with these directives.
REACH stands for Registration, Evaluation, Authorization of Chemicals. The REACH-RoHS directives of the EU are intended to help make the hazards and risks of chemicals in products transparent and to reduce substances that are hazardous to health and the environment as well as chemicals in electrical or electronic devices and their components.
ESG is also about the relationship and compliance rules of companies with their suppliers. The aim is to establish value-based standards for the entire “supply chain” and to enforce compliance with them on a sustainable basis (“ESG compliance”) We have set up a whistleblowing platform for this purpose. The aim is to enable employees and external parties to report inconsistencies in business processes and compliance violations in business operations. Both employees and business partners can report via the platform if they notice violations, they consider reportable under compliance rules.
Acquisitive growth: You have just acquired a subsidiary of E.ON. How does purchasing manage the integration?
The formula for success is analysis, strategy and implementation. When we integrate a new company, we first create comprehensive data transparency. Who are the suppliers? How are the supplier relationships structured? What do the contracts look like? What have the companies done process-wise? How did they work with the suppliers? Which stakeholders did they have internally? What interfaces were there and how can we integrate that into our environment? Then we approach the suppliers and explain Compleo’s philosophy and our mindset. After the analysis of the data and environment, the strategy follows, as well as the implementation in the form of measures.
In addition, contract negotiations with the suppliers of the integrated companies are now on the agenda in the short term. In other words, the operational issues are on the table and we are mastering these on the purchasing side. It is helpful that the acquired companies have identical product groups, as we build similar products. In some cases, however, we have a different vertical range of manufacture.
About strategy, we are expanding our product group strategies throughout the company. This is an elementary component of successful strategic purchasing, which must be well thought out and structured. This results in important synergies and bundling potential for purchasing, but also for engineering. The latter is given completely new opportunities to develop an innovative product portfolio for the future.
Once transparency has been created and the strategy is in place, it is translated into concrete measures, i.e. implementation.
Thank you very much for the interview!
Contact
Kloepfel Group
Christopher Willson
Tel.: 0211 941 984 33
Pempelforter Str. 50
40211 Duesseldorf
Mail: rendite@kloepfel-consulting.com