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Name Marco FuchsCompany OHB SEPosition CEOHQ Bremen, GermanyEmployees 2,000+

EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

New frontiersOHB SE is a family-owned business that has seen amazing changes in aerospace over the past 35 years.

IMAGES MARCUS MEYER

It has built key components for the International Space Station and is a world-leader in satellite technology. It is the prime contractor of 22 satellites for the European Navigation Satellite System, Galileo. Its clients include the European Space Agency and the German Federal Ministry of Defence. OHB SE has achieved a lot, but it is still highly ambitious. CEO

Marco Fuchs talks to The CEO Magazine about some of the milestones that have stood out on the way to the top.

The CEO Magazine: Since buying the business in 1981, what do you think have been your family’s greatest achievements and success stories?

Marco: I think that the main achievement was in 2001 when we developed a concept for Germany’s Radar Reconnaissance Program. We were applauded for this and it was a major breakthrough. Before then we had annual sales in the range of €25-30 million and this contract was worth a further €10 million per year. It was like we had moved from the regional [ football] league to the Bundesliga.

You have grown to be a very large corporation. What systems and structures did you have in place to enable such growth to occur? And what were the biggest challenges that you faced?

In a way, it was a type of chicken and egg process. We had been very active in acquisitions, based on excellence in engineering and technology. At that time our only challenge or limitation was that we were a very small team. However, a team of excellent experts. When we looked at the future, we needed a way to grow that didn’t follow the standard approach. We couldn’t just increase our capacity by hiring more people and then hope that we get the programs, or acquire them.

As featured in The CEO MagazineFor more info visit theceomagazine.com

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EXECUTIVE INTERVIEW

It was a really critical point. We had to make new acquisitions to ensure that we could pay our team and on the other hand our customers expected us to provide excellent teams for additional programs. This duality—this step-by-step approach—was a way to success, but it also provided our biggest challenge.

What exciting projects do you have coming up?

My personal favourite at the moment is a job that we are working on for ESA, called AIM—the Asteroid Impact Mission. It’s a joint venture between ESA and NASA to crash into an asteroid and alter its trajectory. The European contribution will be a small spacecraft that is sent to examine the asteroid and look at it in more detail. The Americans will be sending a spacecraft to impact with the asteroid and the Europeans will measure the effects of the explosion and report back to NASA the change in trajectory. It has a scientific aspect, as we are learning more about asteroids, but also it may be a question of survival as an asteroid colliding with Earth is not a matter of if, but when. Today we can look 20 years ahead and predict that nothing will happen, but there may be surprises. And to deal with a large

asteroid, you can’t solve the problem in just three or four years. The other thing is that asteroids may also end up being a source of minerals for us.

Who are your key suppliers and how important are they to the business?

Our supply chain is an essential element, because at OHB our business approach is to get the contract to complete the mission, we do the engineering but we do subcontract out a lot of the components. We get them delivered, do the integration and then deliver to the customer. We have a network of SMEs in Europe, but there are some elements that can only be procured by bigger companies like Airbus and Thales Alenia Space, who are also partly our competitors.

You have branches throughout Europe. How do you manage and motivate so many people effectively?

Our approach is a balance of independence of individual companies and limited central organisation. We leave the responsibility for business development to the individual companies in the various countries. There are clear corporate guidelines,

and we have a clear corporate strategy. We still cooperate very closely, but part of the motivation is the fact that these individual entities have quite a lot of freedom. It’s challenging for some, but for most companies it’s very motivating.

What are your plans and obstacles in the coming five years?

Traditionally space was something exotic—and something that only governments could afford to be involved in. It was a luxury. However, today it is an essential part of our society and our economy with €20-30 billion of annual economic value via things like telecommunication, Earth observation, navigation and banking—the modern finance industry would not be possible without computers around the world being linked via the GPS network. So at this point it’s clear that space is becoming a more mature industry. There’s a lot of new people coming into the space, a lot of start-ups who have a very different approach compared with traditional agency thinking. It’s a very exciting time to be part of the space industry.

“Providing innovative space systems solutions, Thales Alenia Space Deutschland GmbH is proud to have a heritage of successful collaboration with OHB. Together, we deliver the satellite communication, Earth observation, and security innovations we are all relying on today.” - Sven Carstensen, Managing Director, Thales Alenia Space Deutschland

“It has a scientific aspect, as we are learning more about asteroids, but also it may be a question of survival as an asteroid colliding with Earth is not a matter of if, but when.” – Marco Fuchs

www.thalesaleniaspace.com

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