The KION Group will undertake a restructure

The KION Group has announced a restructure aimed at sharpening its focus on the specific customer and market requirements of the key regions of the world. The new approach should also deliver cross-brand synergies.

The group will be organised into group functions such as research and development, procurement, quality management, finance, HR and IT, plus four operating units: Linde Material Handling EMEA and STILL EMEA (which will each concentrate on Europe, the Middle East and Africa) and KION APAC and KION Americas, which will hold cross-brand responsibility for the Asia Pacific region and the Americas, respectively.

The KION Group, one of the world's two leading suppliers of forklift trucks, warehouse technology and related services, will start to put the new structures in place at the beginning of 2016 as part of its Strategy 2020.

In the new organisation, the operating units will oversee marketing, sales and service as well as production in their regions and will have individual P&L responsibility. They will be supported by the group administrative functions and the KION technical functions of research and development, procurement, quality and production processes, which have been centrally managed under chief technology officer (CTO) Eike Böhm since August 2015.

On the KION Group executive board, the chief executive officer (CEO) Gordon Riske will have responsibility for the Linde Material Handling EMEA, STILL EMEA and KION Americas units, while chief Asia-Pacific officer (C-APAC-O) Ching Pong Quek will be responsible for the KION APAC unit. Chief financial officer (CFO) and labour relations director Thomas Toepfer will retain responsibility for accounting, control and finance, legal, IT and HR.

"The new organisational structure will enable us to focus even better on the specific requirements of our customers around the world and to harness cross-brand potential," says Riske. "We will continue to step up our collaboration across all brands and regions and make this collaboration more efficient, which will benefit our customers, our partners and, of course, our employees. We are confident that by taking these steps we will be in a better position to achieve the objectives of our Strategy 2020 and will secure our long-term success."