Liège, Walloon Region, Belgium
I spent 32y in the steel industry: starting 1st Sept 1980 in R&D at IRSID (now ArcelorMittal R&D at Maizière-lès-Metz), then SOLLAC (Flat product branch of Usinor) for various jobs in production, production planning, technical relationship with automotive clients, to become plant director for strip production at Florange. End of 2000 I joined Cockerill-Sambre in Belgium, (member of Usinor group then Arcelor) as COO. After a short interim as COO for Arcelor Packaging, I moved to Dunkerque as plant director in June 2005 where I stayed till end of 2007 (in between we became ArcelorMittal). Early 2008 I moved to UKRAINE as CEO for Arcelor Mittal Kryvyi-Rih (former Kryvoristal). End of 2010 I left and joined NLMK strip Europe in La Louvière-Belgium as COO. In August 2012 I joined CMI now John Cockerill, Engineering & Services company located in Seraing, as group CTO. Amongst the wide range of activities, John Cockerill entered in the green H2 technology. This leads to the creation of a JV with the French Technip Energy (T.EN) end of 2023. I joined this JV named RELY as CTO. I am back to R&D for the last step of my career. Steel domain, operations, continuous improvement, lean manufacturing, innovation, these are the main areas addressed during these years. I had the great opportunity to be an EFQM assessor for two years end of the 90ies. I attended the 7th session of IHEE (Institute des Hautes études de l’entreprise). Both were nice experience. Among my other activities, I am chairperson of the MECATECH competitiveness cluster in Wallonia since year 2021, and I have just joined the board of directors of Ecole des Mines de Nancy, back to the past of my training!
Global management for innovation and development. - coordination between various sectors - leading projects in new business areas - leading exploratory projects in line with strategy - intellectual property external funding management