In 2011, Siemens Wind Power announced it was setting up three regional divisions. These were EMEA (Europe the Middle East and Africa), Asia Pacific and the Americas, and were headed respectively by regional CEOs Jan Kjaergaard, Kay Weber and Mark Albenze. The system was put in place alongside the arrival of former Siemens Wind CEO Felix Ferlemann. At the same time, Siemens decided to base its wind division in Hamburg, Germany, and split it away from its solar and hydro arms.
The restructuring follows the arrival of new CEO Markus Tacke and involves simplifying the current wind business into offshore and onshore. These two divisions will be headed by Kjaersgaard as global onshore CEO, with offshore head Michael Hannibal taking on the offshore CEO role. In a statement, Siemens explained the change was in response to "differing trends" in the onshore and offshore markets.
Additionally, Siemens said it was also combining production and purchasing into a centralised supply chain management facility. In it a statement it said: "This restructuring secures our market orientation and presence and creates the foundation for greater customer focus while also improving quality assurance and enabling more effective cooperation within the division.
The Americas will become a sub-unit of Kjaersgaard's global onshore division. Current Americas CEO Mark Albenze is expected to continue to heading the US operation.
"Efforts to implement this new organisational structure were launched on 1 January 2014 and are set for completion by 1 April." Further changes are expected to be announced.
Revealing the changes to Windpower Monthly at EWEA 2014, Kjaersgaard said: "We decided to follow the trend in the market. So instead of a regional structure we've decided to change into a product-based structure. We will have two product lines going forward, one for onshore, one for offshore. Then we will have global responsibility in the regions."
According to the latest research on wind turbine installations in 2013 from Make Consulting, Siemens manufacturer had an 8% market share of the global market, making it the fourth largest. In 2012, Siemens was in third place with 10.8% of the market.
