spyridon Kavallas

General Manager, reporting to the Board of Directors .New Business development in all GCC countries and India, manage all operations in the area.

The company is a JV from Bonar (a leading geosynthetics company) and NATPET, ( a large producer of Polypropylene in Saudi Arabia). They have a new geosynthetics plant in Yanbu, Saudi Arabia, which is fully operational in 2014.

Key Responsibilities

• Enter the market of Saudi Arabia and India for geosynthetics
• Business development for all other GCC countries and some African countries
• Assure profitable operation of the company
• Manage all operations in the GCC countries, India and some North African countries.
• Assure the optimum operation of the new geosynthetics plant in Yanbu

Achievements

• Triple sales from the first month of the assignment.
• Develop and provide new products in the market
• Develop and apply geographical expansion strategy in various M. East, Africa and Asian countries

Key Responsibilities

• Handle all local commercial project management issues
• Assure the project will be realized on time, on budget, according to the specifications
• Maintain excellent relationships with all the project stakeholders, especially with Customer project and site management.
• Manage all local technical and construction team, subcontractors and partners. Assure high subcontractors’ performance, help local engineers develop and deliver results.
• Handle and get authorization for the major change orders.
• Directly responsible for manpower planning (short and medium term) and motivation.
• Improve financial results of the project
• Assure an accident free workplace.
• Assure smooth commissioning and start up in cooperation with all parties involved.

Achievements

• Three weeks after my arrival on site, weekly work progress doubled
• Three months after my arrival on site, my team won 25% additional scope of work (sales) because we have outperformed many other engineering and project management companies and we have achieved according to the time schedule milestones.

Key Responsibilities:

Project management for the construction of the new plant (Coordinate internal and external engineering teams, contractors, equipment vendors, commissioning and start up. Project’s budget is $45 million, I supervise and manage directly the external engineering team (10 staff) and the project management team of the contractor (15 engineers on site).

Identify new staff and hire. First phase about 45 employees (engineers, logistics specialists, operators, external services etc), full scale 90 people.

Coordinate all external actions related to the operation of the new plant (permits, legal, utilities, banks, stakeholders, etc)

Coordinate all internal actions to operate the plant (logistics, procedures, management, quality safety systems, IT/IS systems etc).


Cooperate with Sales and R&D for the production and commercialization of locally needed products. Visit customers for pre-marketing activities.

Responsible for all production lines commissioning.


Achievements:

Real project cost 25% below budget, following all specifications, due to very successful negotiations.

Become the manager of the company’s engineering group 5 months after the date of my employment, in parallel to my other activities. Proven remote management and leadership capabilities.

Affecting and improving the working culture of the global organization.

Motivating and alerting all staff to work for the ontime, on budget, within specs realization of this large development project.

Building construction works finished below budget, on time.

Coordinating and finishing a production line acquisition from Bahrein at record low price and coordinating relocation at Jubail at very low cost.

Key Responsibilities:
• Strategy and business plan preparation and execution
• Companywide cost cutting plan preparation and execution
• Leading all efforts for new product development and new product import
• Facilitating all the activities for geographic expansion in the Balkans and the M.East

Achievements: (12 weeks assignment)
• 4 new products are ready to be manufactured in the production facilities
• 4 new products have been imported and enter the market
• 15% reduction of the operating cost.
• 3 companies are evaluated to become representatives in Bulgaria
• Owners + myself have visited all major customers to re-establish effective communication

Key Responsibilities:

• Direct the rolling stock division which includes 3 heavy maintenance sites, 11 operational/light maintenance sites all over Greece, with 1700 staff. The operational budget is over 100 million Euros and the projects’ budget over 50 million Euros per year.
• Unit’s strategy development and execution, in line with the Group Strategy.
• Driving the organisation towards increased productivity and rolling stock availability.
• Define the unit cost for the use of the rolling stock, to facilitate new train operators to enter the Greek Market.
• Improve the existing purchasing procedures.
• Evaluate and negotiate large purchasing contracts (cleaning, spare parts, maintenance activities).
• Participate in the preparation of the inter-company agreements between all the companies which form the Group of the Greek railways.
• Approve all the projects of my unit (rolling stock).
• Sell services to third parties.
• Enter subjects for discussion to the board of Directors and support them during the meeting.

Achievements:

• During the first year of my appointment, daily rolling stock availability increased 25% and heavy maintenance productivity in factories by 60%.
• During the second year, total maintenance cost reduced by 15% (from 110 to 95 million €).
• For the first time ever for the Greek Railways, my unit prepared and applied a “Management by Objectives” system who was much appreciated by all the staff.
• Projects’ design and supervision was decentralized, following certain procedures, which helped a lot for the right execution of all the small and medium size projects.
• A new system to monitor daily rolling stock availability and reliability performance was established.
• The year 2009 was the best year ever for the Greek Railways regarding safety at work and loss prevention.

Key Responsibilities:

• Member of the board of Directors
• Manage the business unit, coordinating all marketing and sales activities, supervise all projects.
• Responsible for the P&L of the business unit.
• Mainly, the scope of our projects was to perform full organizational performance reviews, design and plan activities to improve operational efficiency, mainly by redesigning procedures, practices or whole departments, like sales, distribution, logistics, production etc.
Some of the projects are:
Organisational and operational merging of 5 technical companies, which formed an important construction group of 2500 people, 210 € turnover and more than 45 construction sites.
Reorganisation project manager, to turn around a company of 18 million Euro turnover.
Turnaround and reorganisation manager of a food industry (turnover 27 million Euro, 300 employees) - Interim manager - 1 year
• Other contracts won refer to business plan developments, ERP project coordination, field market research for insulation materials and other products of the DOW Chemical Company in Greece, Bulgaria, Romania.

Achievements:

• A medium size electronics and electrical equipment company started a reorganization project, with very difficult cash flow situation, very close to be bankrupt. After the successful implementation of the change plan, under my team’s supervision, the company achieved to double it’s turnover after 3 years (from 18 millions to 36 millions) and expanded all over Greece, with good financial structure.
• A large multinational packaging materials company could not make to work three of the most important modules of the SAP EPR software. My team has succeeded to make the three modules to work perfectly in 6 months time ( modules Production Planning, Cost Accounting and Materials Purchasing).

Key Responsibilities:

• Participate in due diligence and evaluate acquisition opportunities, mainly in Europe. Member of the team to close the deal and apply the post merger reorganization.
• Reorganise European operations and improve supply chain (manufacturing, purchasing, logistics)
• Improve operational performance
• Manage the biggest plant of the Group (metal strapping, Athens)
• Sponsor (one of the two) for the ERP implementation for the whole Group
• Performance evaluation of each one of the manufacturing and warehouse facilities in Europe
• Participate in the board of directors meetings


Achievements:

• One month after my nomination, I started a major effort for the two Greek production sites to improve work productivity. After only two months the labor cost went down by 10 % (220000 €), with increased production volume and improved product quality.
• I have started a major European reorganisation plan, to improve work productivity supply chain management and maintenance cost. The expected benefits within one year were 12 % work productivity increase, 8% less transportation costs and 20 % less maintenance costs. The positive results in Germany especially have been shown three months after the start up of this turn around plan.
• I participated in a team of four directors who organized the merging of 3 companies which were acquired in the UK, to form one effective UK company.

Key Responsibilities:

• Responsible for budget preparation and execution
• Manage a very important process change, to abandon CFCs as blowing agents and replace them with CO2, mainly for environmental reasons. The change was involving the majority of the raw materials and big part of the machinery and equipment of the plant. The business commercial strategy in Europe was depending on the success of this project.
• Prepare and implement the plant’s investment plan
• Responsible for production, maintenance, stock, safety, quality and environmental performance
• Responsible for all external certification (ISO 9002, ISO 14000, FIW and ACERMI standards
• Responsible for business excellence assessment and sponsoring two six sigma projects

Achievements:

• According to internal benchmarking analysis, the plant was having the best performance among 9 production sites in Europe regarding production cost, reliability and raw materials usage.
• I have driven a big process change, leaded by environmental legislation, involving almost all raw materials and big part of the equipment, achieving prime production the first day of operation, high capacity and addition of grades to the existing product mix. Three other plants, in Europe, which changed before us, they could not produce prime for weeks and for months they were operating with very low capacity. This excellent performance was appreciated by the global business management and the team was awarded a rare special recognition award.
• My special capability regarding Knowledge management, meaning efficiently gathering and spreading the necessary knowledge to the employees who have to know, was a very important factor for this success.
• Customer complaints reduced 50% during the first nine months of my appointment.

Key Responsibilities:

Responsible for production budget and all production issues.

Responsible for the preparation and execution of a three years investments plan (1996-1998), 8 million $ budget.

Customer Technical Support and Development focal point, Greece and Turkey

Responsible for the reorganization and restructuring of the whole production site (two plants) and implementation of the “total quality”, “lean manufacturing” and “employee empowerment” principles (change leader for Greek operations).

Project manager for the construction of a new (the second) Styrofoam production line. The project was a low budget, fast paced project, necessary to cover increased demand for the central European market.

Achievements:

In April 1998, as project manager, I finished a project of 4 million US$, to built a new production line in only 7 months. I finished the project on (record) time, on budget, within specifications. The project team got rare recognition award from the global business manager and me in parallel a promotion. From the first month of operation the plan surpassed it’s design capacity and achieved a reliability of 98 %.

I have motivated our employees to improve their attitude and working style, regarding cost, quality and safety aspects. As a result, the customer complaints and the losses had been almost eliminated at Lavrion.

I have successfully completed many cost reduction and productivity improvement projects, contributing a lot to a total productivity gain 50 % within three years.
Being responsible for the re-engineering / restructuring of the whole site at Lavrion, I achieved a smooth transition period, for the biggest change that the organisation had ever implemented, while maintaining its productivity and enthusiasm. The change was including a delayred structure, implementation of team work groups and a lot of training for the plant’s personnel.

Key Responsibilities:

• Production management (people, raw materials, inventories, quality, process control, cost, projects).
• Safety focal point for the whole site. Responsible to improve safety and emergency procedures and maintain the “zero accident” culture.
• Project manager for the installation of new fired heaters (budget 1 million €). This includes economic evaluation, budgeting, technical description writing, vendor evaluation, installation and commissioning.
• Maintenance scheduling, new technology follow up.
• Design for many electro-mechanical projects, including air conveying systems, heat exchangers, automation systems, production line debottlenecking.
• Programme coordinator for the installation of the first SAP ERP in Greece.

Achievements:

• Member of the team to prepare and get the first ISO 9000 Certification in Greece.
• Establish the continuous improvement culture.
• Efficient execution of all projects
• I have worked for the successful installation of segments of the EPR system (SAP) for DOW at Lavrion and I participated in optimisation teams after that
• I have been awarded a special “environmental care award”, after a DOW international competition (1993) for a 50 % water consumption reduction in the plant