Manfred Stern now also CEO of Yaskawa Europe GmbH

Manfred Stern, who previously managed the Europe business of the Yaskawa Group as Chief Operating Officer (COO) & President, was appointed to the position of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in April. (Source: Yaskawa)

Yaskawa Europe GmbH is restructuring its management: Manfred Stern, who has previously led Yaskawa Group’s European business as Chief Operating Officer (COO) & President, was appointed as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in April. Stern succeeds Koichi Takamiya in his new role, who is returning to the Japanese headquarters after eight years in Europe. There, he will be responsible worldwide for sales and marketing of the Yaskawa Group. With Stern as President & CEO, Yaskawa Europe will be led for the first time by an exclusively European management team.

Manfred Stern has been with Yaskawa since 2008. Under his responsibility, the divisions Robotics and Drives & Motion were merged into one company in 2010. Further strategic steps followed to position Yaskawa Europe as a solutions provider, such as the acquisition of the company Vipa, specialized in control and visualization technology, in 2012, the takeover of a majority stake in the Yaskawa company in South Africa in the same year, and the establishment of a new national subsidiary in Turkey in 2013. Since October 2014, the Finnish company The Switch Engineering Cooperation also belongs to Yaskawa. The Switch, headquartered in Helsinki, offers generators and inverters in the high power range for wind turbines.

“After the successful realignment and the formation of the new Yaskawa Europe organization, we are now focusing on two main priorities,” describes Stern the next strategic objectives: “Firstly, we will expand our business through sales efforts. This particularly includes leveraging synergies and cross-sales potential between the sales channels of the divisions Robotics, Drives & Motion, and Vipa. And secondly, we will utilize our developed system expertise to offer advanced solutions to the market based on a broad product portfolio – including control technology, drive technology, and robot portfolio.”

Yaskawa, with an annual turnover of more than 360 billion yen, is a globally leading manufacturer of servo drives (Sigma series), frequency converters (such as A1000), and Motoman industrial robots. Since 1979, Yaskawa has been represented in Europe with its own subsidiary. The current Yaskawa Europe GmbH, based in Eschborn near Frankfurt, is divided into three divisions: Drives & Motion (drive and control technology as well as linear technology), Robotics (industrial robots), and Vipa (automation and control technology). Its approximately 1,400 employees serve the markets of Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. The European headquarters of the Robotics Division is located in Allershausen near Munich.