Almost 30 years ago, Hans Albert Büsse joined Feinmetall and was responsible for the regional sales activities in Germany. As an engineer for communications technology and strong believer in teamwork, he has always been interested in the exchange and cooperation with different technically oriented people. An interview form our #peopleinournetwork series.

Feinmetall offers unique solutions for contacting. This includes, for example, wiring harness tests. In today’s cars, there are miles of wiring harnesses, and the connections and connectors need to be reliable for the car to function properly. We started conducting such tests 25 years ago and are now the world market leader in this area. Wherever there are any electrical connections, such as in semiconductors, batteries, circuit boards, our contact pins come into play. This starts with micro contacts and ends with very large ones, depending on the application.

The successful development of Feinmetall has taken me to so many countries and cultures. International business is definitely an appealing and pleasant aspect of my current role. We have developed a lot – and it has always been a team success! When everyone is basically willing to make a difference, we have many satisfied customers and Feinmetall is well known. Certainly this teamwork is what inspires and motivates me every day!

Around 20 years ago, we realized that we need to be close to our global customers and their production sites.  That was the beginning of our international business strategy and certainly the basis of our successful corporate development. We started with sales teams and subsequently expanded them over time. Depending on the market, we included support and after-sales teams. In addition to that we also set up three production sites outside of Germany: in the Czech Republic, Singapore and Tunisia.

Today our export rate is over 75% and we get positive feedback from our customers, especially for our excellent technical sales and support teams. I am consciously emphasizing the “we” here, because you don’t win a game all by yourself, obviously good teamwork is key! You win it together, with each individual contributing in a highly motivated manner and willing to develop further. No matter where we are in the world, the talent to find the right people and bind them to us is essential. Our teams are successful, and we want them to be even more successful, for the benefit of our employees and for the benefit of our company.

First of all, it is important to recognize trends at an early stage. Ideally, we can pull a ready-made solution out of the box, the moment our customers are asking for it for the first time. Of course that does not always work. It is equally important to be in permanent contact with our key customers and to have the technical skills and capacities to quickly implement the right solutions. At Feinmetall, we are constantly optimizing our short reaction times. This is something we are particularly good at, because we have the necessary resources.

The challenges of the future include new contacting solutions in the field of vehicle electrification, as well as the ongoing trend towards the Internet of Things. We are working on solutions in the areas of high current, high frequency and miniaturisation of our contacts in the semiconductor area. Anyone, who would like to experience our solutions up close, can do so at trade fairs, such as Electronica 2022 in Munich!

I have founded and set up subsidiaries for Feinmetall in many countries.  My team and myself, we look after them very closely altogether. This also applies to all our partners worldwide. Surely, I do not have a preference. It is rather a great gift of my job to experience this diversity, to deal with different approaches and to take everyone with me in their specialness. Therefore, there is not one exciting country, but all of them are exciting in their own way.

We founded Feinmetall Mexico in 2008 and, as a matter of fact, our advisor at LBBW recommended German Centre Mexico to us. We were looking for a small office with a storage, when we came to the German Centre – we were quite inexperienced at the time. The fact that they not only had offices and storage rooms, but also tax advisors, a canteen and personnel consultants, and that the building is well secured, made our decision to move in at the German Centre really easy.

After this positive experience with German Centre Mexico in Santa Fe, three years later we also decided to setup an office in the German Centre in Shanghai, China. After all, we still reside at both locations today, and we have grown significantly in Mexico and in China. I would always opt for a German Centre in any other country relevant to us, if there was one there.

There are definitely a few people who inspire me. Scientists or programmers, for example, who start with nothing, dive deeper and develop things. People, who don’t just talk about possibilities, but are real doers and founders of highly successful companies. If such entrepreneurs also keep an eye on the social aspects of their employees, then I would call them role models.