IndustrieHansa produces the bulk of its management staff from amongst its own ranks. This process is underpinned by a specific approach to staff development: Talented employees are spotted at an early stage, encouraged and promoted as their skills see fit. This approach can be seen in the CVs of many team leaders and heads of departments and divisions – extending right up to senior positions in the management team. IndustrieHansa's Managing Director, Uwe Hihn, is the perfect embodiment of HR's strategy of methodical pushing and pulling.

He set out on the road to senior management in 1995. After studying economics at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich and two years working as an accountant for an electronics company, Uwe Hihn became a controller at IndustrieHansa. Right from the start, he didn't see his work restricted to checking bare figures, instead he chose to concentrate on intelligently analyzing and evaluating them to produce data of relevance to control and decision-making processes.

He did this work so well that just four years later he took on overall responsibility for controlling and in 2003 was appointed to the management team as Managing Director. Since then Uwe Hihn's desk is where responsibility for corporate planning and development has converged, corporate objectives and strategies have been developed and their implementation controlled - and the fine line between growth and profitability has been watched like a hawk. Anyone wanting to help with this challenging work is warmly welcome to follow in his footsteps...