Gabriele has been taking on new tasks and challenges at ebm‑papst for over 4 decades
Gabriele has been with ebm‑papst for an impressive 40 years. Her career began with a commercial apprenticeship at the company, which at that time was not even called ebm‑papst. Over the following years, she took on various roles, working in scheduling, sales and accounting. In 1997, for the first time, she became part of a large IT project and accompanied the SAP introduction in Landshut for Finance and Controlling. As a key user, Gabriele subsequently contributed to the successful introduction of further modules - including SAP in Slovenia in 2012. Not long afterwards, the head of IT offered her the opportunity to take the next step from key user to in-house consultant. She was now one of the six members of the SAP Finance and Controlling team in Landshut and was also responsible for the connected sites in Slovenia and Serbia.
Along with the implementation of the new corporate strategy “Making the future together”, the ebm‑papst Shared Service Center (SSC) was established in 2023 - this entity pools resources, promotes global thinking and action and centralizes site-specific processes.
In the course of this, new opportunities also opened up for Gabriele and she became a permanent part of the ebm‑papst IT Finance and Controlling Shared Service. She is part of a team of five colleagues who support all three SAP systems from Mulfingen, St. Georgen and Landshut as well as all associated locations. For the employees in the Finance, Controlling and Treasury departments, this means that there is a central service that takes care of problems and bugs while standardizing and centralizing processes in the long term.
“However, this also means that responsibilities have to be let go and transferred to the service. This requires adaptability and a great openness to new solutions,” says Gabriele and is therefore all the more pleased that the shared service team has been very well received by the individual departments.
„It's worth letting go of topics in order to take up new ones. Leaving your own comfort zone, where you previously felt safe with your own work.“
Gabriele, Inhouse Consultant, Finance and Controlling Services ebm‑papst IT, SSC Business Solutions
This new path is also a rewarding experience for Gabriele. The work is very multifaceted due to the different tasks and Gabriele is constantly learning new things about the existing systems at the other locations. Each of the five members of the Shared Service gains valuable knowledge from the others' experience and prior knowledge. This is particularly helpful when developing new processes in joint project work.
And so they have recently been supporting the SAP implementation in the USA, Mexico and Canada, which has opened up completely new perspectives for them. An opportunity that would not have been possible before Shared Services, because these locations are not connected to Landshut.
Gabriele also sees work in IT as changing, regardless of her own changing tasks. It's a lot more fast-paced these days. Individual projects have to be completed quicker and often run back-to-back to ensure efficient work. Due to the all-pervasive digitalization, it is important to coordinate and weigh up new processes with all areas: What impact will changes have on other areas or processes?
She perceives other changes positively, especially from a very personal perspective, and notes: “Women have found their place in IT, are more accepted and better represented.” Those responsible at ebm‑papst have actively supported this progress. Right from the start, Gabriele was given the opportunity to build a career despite having a child and working part-time. She shared parental leave for her daughter with her husband, which was much less prevalent 23 years ago than it is today.
Understanding processes in order to make them better
Olga found her way into IT through an internship - and until today she is grateful to have had this opportunity.
Olga has been part of the IT team at ebm‑papst for over twelve years. While studying mathematics with a focus on industry in Stuttgart, she started her career at ebm‑papst with an internship, followed by her bachelor's thesis. After graduating, she became an IT Manufacturing Inhouse Consultant and took over IT support for production, particularly in the area of digitalization and securing processes, as well as in the implementation of Industry 4.0. “And this despite the fact that I didn't originally see myself in IT at all,” Olga reports with a smile.
At the beginning of her internship, she couldn't really get a picture of her future job. But her curiosity quickly got the better of her. She studied the applications intensively and initially found the practical implementation possibilities through programming particularly exciting. Her enthusiasm grew steadily, and theoretical knowledge quickly turned into practical knowledge, which was of great importance to the company.
Olga worked as a consultant until 2020, taking on ever-increasing responsibility. At the beginning of the pandemic, in June 2020, she became the head of a team of eight people. A completely new challenge - especially because management had to be digital right from the start. By December 2023, the team had grown to 13 people and with the restructuring of ebm‑papst under the motto “Making the Future Together”, Olga's field of activity also changed: the IT landscape and all resources now had to be set up globally. To make this possible and to synchronize work processes and structures, the consultants at the Mulfingen, Landshut, St. Georgen, India and Romania locations were pooled organizationally, with Olga now taking the lead as Director IT Manufacturing.
„The biggest change and the biggest challenge is to establish global thinking.“
Olga, Director IT Manufacturing
But even regardless of the strategic restructuring, IT at ebm‑papst has changed significantly over the years. When Olga started, the overarching department was called “IT and Processes” and thus encompassed the function of IT within different processes.
Today, there is always one IT department for each specialist department, which knows and understands the individual challenges of the department and still has an across-the-board understanding of the process. This allows numerous solutions to be developed and standardized on the IT side and then applied in the individual specialist departments. IT takes on an advisory role and also develops guidelines and policies to make day-to-day work easier.
Olga loves her job today as much as she did on the first day and particularly appreciates working with different people and personalities who make a difference on a daily basis. “During a project, I often gain a view of the big picture - of the interplay of individual strengths in joint teamwork and of the output with maximum potential,” says Olga. The diversity of personalities in her team constantly creates new perspectives and opportunities.
IT in research and development
Katharina makes a point of always keeping the big picture in mind and taking on a global perspective.
Since October 1, 2022, Katharina has been part of the IT team at ebm‑papst – initially as IT Enterprise Project Manager – and contributes her expertise. Her journey at ebm‑papst began with the challenging task of introducing a Product Lifecycle Management System (PLM) from the IT side. The main focus was on the areas of product management and engineering, which includes the support of products from their creation and development through to discontinuation. At that time, however, it had not yet been decided which PLM software should be used, which meant that Katharina had to deal intensively with the overarching methods and standards in the area of project management in order to gain a deeper understanding of the status quo. She also took on the task of establishing a portfolio management system in order to further optimize the processes.
In the meantime, her role has evolved and Katharina has become IT PLM Engineering Director in November 2023. In this position, she is responsible for a team of 30 with four team leads that deals with all aspects of engineering - from development to lifecycle management, simulation, testing and roll-out. Under their leadership, the team is introducing the “Siemens Teamcenter” tool and other Siemens solutions that will fundamentally change the way engineering and IT work in this area. The switch to a standard software is a significant step that will lead the company towards a more efficient and globally standardized way of working.
Katharina remembers her start at ebm‑papst well. “It wasn't easy to get a good overview at the beginning, but the company is extremely open and generous when it comes to promoting employees and giving individual employees freedom,” she says. She appreciates the strong sense of community. In IT in particular, she finds her colleagues to be very cooperative and open, which makes it easier for her to tackle her tasks successfully. Katharina sees the big challenge in managing the change from a locally operating company to a global group. For her, it really is the right solution that counts, not the individual approach, and she wants to take everyone along with her. “We will only be successful as a company if we work on solutions together - whether in the specialist area or IT,” she explains.
„We need to standardize, improve and centralize many smaller processes in order to be globally successful.“
Katharina, IT PLM Engineering Director
The collaboration with the specialist departments has developed positively since she started, even if there were challenges at the beginning. “Sometimes different worlds collide,” reports Katharina. She emphasizes how important it is to have an overall entrepreneurial understanding of processes in order to make the job varied and exciting. She enjoys working with different specialist departments and people and synchronizing the different views and working methods in order to develop a functioning overall process.