CEO Beda Bolzenius works to blend cultures

TOKYO — How does a German CEO blend the contrasting cultures of companies from Italy and Japan into an integrated global auto-parts powerhouse?

For Beda Bolzenius, the man tapped to lead the newly minted Marelli Corp., the first step is having the Italian and Japanese employees work together.

And then give them plenty of time.

"A real cultural change takes a couple of years," Bolzenius concedes.

Bolzenius' engineers come from Japan's Calsonic Kansei and Italy's Marelli Magnetti, the two suppliers brought together by the New York investment company KKR & Co. in a bold gambit to create a giant with the scale and resources needed to invest in costly next-generation technologies.

The German Bolzenius was hired away from Johnson Controls to run Calsonic Kansei in Japan and then he was handed command of the merged company, which last September changed its name to Marelli.

The combined auto parts supplier aims to expand by widening its customer base beyond its traditional backers, Nissan Motor Co. in Japan and Asia and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles in Europe and North America, Bolzenius told Automotive News here.

The new Marelli has won its first new contracts in decades with General Motors and Honda, Bolzenius said. And Marelli predicts rapid growth in China, where it has been playing catch-up until now. The Calsonic side of the house is leveraging its Asian sales network to sell Marelli products into new markets.

But the CEO believes the biggest challenge will be seamlessly weaving together two companies from opposite sides of the planet, with 170 locations and 62,000 employees.

"The integration of the two companies is the most important thing, if we want to grow, if we want to have cross sales, if we want to have the right synergies," Bolzenius said. "We need to build on bringing the teams together and having them function a lot more efficiently."

Marelli has a merger office that is working on about 100 areas of integration. The checklist covers everything from unified communication tools to standardized company procedures.

The integration managers meet with Bolzenius once a month to provide an update.

A key strategy is assigning employees from both companies a shared project to work on, Bolzenius said. This builds trust and familiarity while simultaneously getting real work done.

"The best way to bring people together is to give them a subject to work on," he said. "The best way is to get respect and understand each other just by doing something together."

For starters, Bolzenius said, production engineering teams from the former Calsonic Kansei, steeped in the Japanese tradition of ultra-efficient manufacturing techniques, have been dispatched to former Marelli Magnetti plants to help streamline new product launches. The collaboration delivered a key launch for a new headlamp product at a plant in North America, he said.

The need for more cooperation is especially strong in areas where the two original companies overlap: exhaust systems, electronics and electrified powertrain technology, the CEO said.

Both sides have inverters in mass production. But the new union doesn't necessarily mean scaling back one company's operations, Bolzenius said. The market for electrified powertrains is growing and both companies can coordinate on expansion.

Shedding redundant overcapacity definitely will be part of the plan, however.

In September, Marelli said it will shutter four former Calsonic Kansei plants in Japan this year and move that work to other Marelli factories — or outsource it. The factories employ more than 600 people making a range of products, from cockpit modules to air conditioning components.

But the integration hasn't come easy, and Bolzenius says it won't be quick.

"There are so many things we can do together that will hopefully accelerate it," he said. "But at the end of the day, it will still take time."