Dr. Uwe Schmid new Managing Director of ALBAT+WIRSAM

On 18 July 2011, Dr. Uwe Schmid was appointed Managing Director of Albat+Wirsam Software GmbH as well as Senior Vice President (SVP) Software Solutions for the Glaston group. He is a member of the Glas¬ton Executive Management Group (EMG) and directly reports to CEO Arto Metsänen.

The outgoing Managing Director and SVP Software Solutions, Günter Befort, will be working as a Senior Industrial Advisor and member of Glaston EMG in the operational business, supporting Dr. Uwe Schmid in his daily work. Günter Befort joined the company in 1988 and was appointed Managing Director in 1994.

"I want to say thanks to Günter for his invaluable efforts to integrate Albat+Wirsam and for the success of the business unit software in those years“, so Arto Metsänen. „For Glaston, Günter’s vast experience and thorough knowledge of the flat glass industry will be of invaluable use in the future.“

Before joining Albat+Wirsam, Dr. Uwe Schmid (48) had been working for McKinsey & Company since 2004 as a member of the global management team of the Business Technology Office (BTO). The quali-fied physicist comes with long years of international experience as an IT strategy consultant at McKinsey in various industries like e.g. trade, software, and mechanical engineering, and as a manager in leading software companies such as SAP, i2 Technologies, and SUSE Linux. His special subject: IT-supported busi¬ness processes, especially production, logistics (supply chain management), and product development as well as IT architecture and IT strategy.

Dr. Schmid has already taken a closer look at the flat glass industry in the past weeks, like recently at Glass Performance Days in Tampere, and has been talking to several customers and partners of Albat+ Wirsam. „I am“, says Schmid, „ astonished and fascinated of how forward-looking and innovative the flat glass and window industry is. One of the major aspects is surely the optimisation of the entire value added chain by improved logic and uncompromising automation because this is the only way of coping with future challenges. I believe that Albat+Wirsam’s software solutions can help to create an enormous increase in value in this industry and I am looking forward to expanding and pushing this, together with our customers and partners.“