Rheinböllen, Germany – As of March 1, 2023, the management teams of HAHN Group and HAHN Automation will be merged and strengthened.
With immediate effect, Frank Konrad and Philipp Unterhalt will form a dual leadership team and will assume equal responsibility for both companies as Co-CEOs. They will be supported by Jörg Kilb and Diego van Muylem who will complete the management of both companies as COO and CFO.
“Grow Together” is the challenge the new management team will be facing. In recent years, HAHN Group has expanded strongly, established new locations, opened up new markets and countries. “This has enabled us to build up expertise and know-how in different industries, to diversify and to internationalize strongly,” explains Frank Konrad, Co-CEO alongside Philipp Unterhalt. “By combining our competences and capacities as a group, we are already able to handle not only individual projects, but entire programs to equip entire production halls.”
In order to establish this standard on the market in the long term and to increase the speed of order processing even further, the harmonization and integration of processes and systems as well as the standardization of working methods and tools are of central importance. To further accelerate this development, they decided to also merge the management teams.
“After the massive growth of the last few years, our focus is on bringing the companies within HAHN Group even closer together. In this way, we are positioning ourselves in the market in a customer-centric and industry-specific way,” says Philipp Unterhalt. “What applies to entire organizations must also apply to their management teams. We want to streamline structures and fill central positions equally in the new constellation. In this way, we will use our strengths from the operational automation business and strategic vision to the advantage of both companies and ultimately the entire group.”
The other C-Level Management
Philipp Unterhalt and Frank Konrad have already been working side by side in the management of HAHN Group for over a year. With Jörg Kilb, COO, and Diego van Muylem, CFO, the companies are consciously relying on continuity and internal know-how when filling the other two top positions.
Jörg Kilb is considered an expert in the field of automation. His professional roots lie at HAHN Automation, whose companies, activities and markets he knows very well and has been developing further since 2020 as COO alongside Frank Konrad.
His career is an example of continuous development towards more responsibility. The graduate industrial engineer started as a working student at HAHN Automation. This was followed by positions as assistant to the management and member of the organizational development team, all the way to branch manager, where he was involved in the company’s operational management for the first time. Kilb was also able to contribute his expertise within HAHN Group, holding positions as Head of Supply Chain Management, Risk Management & IT and Division Director from 2017.
Diego van Muylem joined HAHN Group in 2017 as Head of Corporate Development. Born in Argentina, he previously worked for years in corporate consulting, taking on projects in management consulting, restructuring and M&A. Under his strategic and commercial advice, HAHN Group continued to grow, processes were optimized and integrated with the long-term goal of forming a harmonious group. Van Muylem takes over as CFO from Axel Greschitz, who is retiring from active business. His previous career with a focus on finance and controlling but also strategic management consulting makes van Muylem the ideal candidate for the replacement. In April 2022, he initially took over the commercial management as Deputy CFO alongside Axel Greschitz.
“I would like to sincerely thank Axel for his work for HAHN Group as well as the very trustful cooperation and wish him all the best on behalf of the entire team,” says Unterhalt as farewell to his colleague. “With the reinforcement by Diego and Jörg, we are positioning ourselves even more powerfully for further growth and future challenges.”
