Latecoere announces its new leadership team to focus on customer ramp-up led growth, operational excellence and drive profitability.
“Looking at our priorities ahead – namely delivering on-time on the increasing production volumes our customers need while navigating the challenges of a difficult supply chain environment, we need the right leadership configuration to be successful given we now have 6000 employees across 14 countries,” said Greg Huttner, Latecoere Group CEO. “This new team set-up will ensure our operational units, representing our manufacturing sites are at the heart of the executive committee agenda, and the critical global technical and support functions are around the table to help the operational units reach their top performance level”. Latecoere is moving to a new organization to increase the focus on customers, plants and suppliers, structured around four Operating Units, Global & Support Functions.
Our new Operating Units will have end-to-end responsibility for delivering on our customers’ needs – including P&L responsibility:
– Aerostructures Americas led by Stéphane Molinier will run our detailed parts, composite and assembly sites in Hermosillo, Mexico, as well as our two sites in Canada (Burlington, Delta) and our Brazil site in Jacarei
– Aerostructures Europe led by Wolfgang Konrad will run our sites doing a mix of detailed complex parts, composite and assembly in Europe – Gimont (France), Montredon (France), Plovdiv (Bulgaria), Prague (Czech Republic) and central operations at Toulouse-Périole (France)
– Interconnection Systems led by Samuel Begué focused on state-of-the-art EWIS harnesses and avionics racks with sites in France (Labège, Liposthey and Vendargues), India (Belagavi), Morocco (Casablanca), Tunisia (Fouchana) and Mexico (Hermosillo)
– Special Products & Services (SPS) focused on high value add Aerostructures & Interconnection customer services as well as specialized and complex technology solutions (MADES, TAC and Advanced Wireless and Video Systems).
Latecoere has unrivalled industrial and technical know-how across aerostructures, doors, complex parts, harness and racks deep in our global technical function teams. These functions which are at the heart of our business today and working on the aerospace solutions for the future will now form part of the executive committee to ensure they are fully synchronized with the Operational Units:
– Sales & Programs – led by David Oliveira
– Operational Excellence & Quality – led by Francois Okon
– Engineering – led by Thierry Eftymiades
– Purchasing – led by Jérome Ouziel
– Transformation – led by Cecilia Mattson
– Innovation – led by Serge Bérenger
“Having been at this company for over 30 years, I am excited to say this will be the first time we elevate this level of technical expertise to the group executive committee and also ensure we get the full benefit of our technical knowledge across the different teams and sites,” said Thierry Eftymiades.
Our support functions play a critical role in making sure we can operate effectively and efficiently as a group. In particular we are strengthening our focus on operational finance and investing in state-of-theart digital & data solutions to both help our teams on the frontline with better tools and automation while also driving efficiencies:
– Finance & M&A – led by Gary Cleaver
– HR, HSE & ESG, Brand & Communication – led by Hervé Blanchard
– IT & Data – led by Jean-Luc Vincent Franc
– Legal & Compliance – led by Mathieu von Websky
Latecoere now has over 6000 employees across 14 countries working day in and day out to produce what our customers need, on-time, on-quality. Having now emerged from the depths of COVID and challenges resulting from the historic drop in production levels, we are now focused on robust operational ramp-up for growth on the back of 40% growth in 2022 and 40% growth in H1 2023 – with further growth required given the robust aircraft order book to be delivered. To achieve this we need to shift our team culture, building on our legacy Latecoere strengths but also recognizing we need a new mindset to be successful in this environment.
Given this we are putting much greater emphasis on driving ruthless focus on what matters for our customers – fewer & clearer priorities, a “First-Time-Right” mindset which is critical for quality and operational excellence and driving better teaming-up for impact across sites & functions.
The Executive Committee builds on a mix of company leaders with deep Latecoere experience (100 years across the team) and new talent with deep industry experience (primarily across aerospace and automotive sectors).
To highlight recent new joiners to the team:
– Gary Cleaver joins as CFO. Gary brings an excellent track record as a highly operational industrial CFO (from his time at Ideal Standard). He also brings deep finance function knowledge (20 years at PWC and Arthur Andersen) and a private equity transformation mindset (7 years at Core Equity Holdings)
– Jean-Luc Vincent Franc has joined as SVP IT & Digital. Jean-Luc brings a wealth of aerospace and digitalisation experience having worked at Airbus on operations and IT including building the Skywise program
– Cecilia Mattson will be joining in early 2024 and SVP Transformation. Cecilia has deep aerospace transformation experience having worked at Alix Partners and most recently at Airbus on ATR transformation and major M&A projects
– Francois Okon will be joining in November 2023 as SVP Operational Excellence Officer. Francois has 30 years of experience in lean manufacturing which will help us drive better operational performance and to maximise efficiencies
– Wolfgang Konrad joins as COO for the Aerostructures Europe operating unit. Wolfgang brings deep aerospace, and automotive experience having worked at MTU Aerospace, General Electric, Oerlikon, Siemens & BMW
“I am delighted that Gary, Jean-Luc, Cecilia, François, and Wolfgang will be joining the leadership team and together with the other members of the Executive Committee, we will reach world class levels of performance across quality, on time delivery and cost, whilst continue to develop our engineering capabilities to establish our position as the world’s best supplier of aerostructures and interconnection systems for the future of flight” said Greg Huttner, Chief Executive Officer.
Read the press release, including full leadership team profiles.
