New COO appointed

Stéphane Simonetta, 43, joins the Grundfos Group as new Executive Vice President and Head of Operations (COO) September 1st 2015.

Stéphane Simonetta brings 18 years of experience in Supply Chain, Lean Manufacturing and Operations, primarily in the automotive industry, and has solid professional experience from assignments in Thailand, Mexico, France, Slovakia and China.

For the past years he has been with Honeywell Transportation Systems, based in Rolle, Switzerland, as Head of Supply Chain then Vice-President of Operations. Prior to this, Stéphane served as Director for Valeo's Group China Supply Chain and Production, based in Shanghai, and before this as Supply Chain Director Europe for one of Valeo’s businesses.

Stéphane Simonetta is 43 years old, born in France and holds a Master Degree in Industrial Engineering and Computer Science from the Ecole d'Ingénieur en Génie Informatique et Productique in Valenciennes, France, and has a degree from IMD. Besides French, Stéphane is also fluent in English, Thai and Spanish. He will relocate in Denmark together with his wife and their two twin daughters.

Group President Mads Nipper says:

“Stéphane’s solid experience and ideas will be most valuable for the deployment of our business strategy 2020, where one of our key focus areas is our supply chain. We want to build an end-to-end supply chain as a competitive advantage by aligning front and back end in order to satisfy demand across value chains and leveraging our scale in manufacturing, procurement, and logistics. We aim to provide our customers with world class delivery service, reduce our costs and use our supply chain as showcase for sustainable manufacturing”.

Stéphane Simonetta will join the Group Management with direct report to Mads Nipper, Group President, and will be based in Bjerringbro, Denmark.

Grundfos’ Group Management: 

Mads Nipper (Group President)
Poul Due Jensen (EVP – Sales, Marketing & Service) 

Mikael Geday (EVP – Finance, IT & Legal) 

Lars Aagaard (EVP – Business Development) 

Stéphane Simonetta (EVP – Operations) 

Henrik M. Christiansen (SVP – Human Resources) 

Kim Nøhr Skibsted (VP – Communications)