Glaston announced a plan to further accelerate the execution of its strategic growth and profitability initiatives. The plan aims to strengthen the company’s focus on customer experience, especially in services, ensure continued positive profitability development, and reach additional operational efficiencies.
Glaston’s medium-term strategic targets remain unchanged. The business-specific strategic initiatives will continue, supported with a new strategic cornerstone initiative ‘industry-leading customer service.' Glaston increases focus and invests in service capabilities and resources to accelerate services’ growth.
Three new business functions
In the new structure, Glaston plans to have three business functions:
- Market areas are the main customer interface in the Americas, EMEA and APAC. Market areas will cover in close collaboration with the business lines machine and services sales, as well as manage regional service operations. Sasu Koivumäki, chief sales officer, will lead this business function.
- Solutions and operations, to be led by Miika Äppelqvist, will be responsible for all business line-related machine and service product portfolios. The current business lines within the architecture and mobility, display and solar business areas will continue in the solutions and operations organization and will be called tempering and laminating, insulating glass (combined current architecture segment) and mobility (current MDS segment).
Production operations will be led globally by the solutions and operations business function. The production of Glaston technologies will continue in Tampere in Finland, Neuhausen in Germany, and Tianjin in China. Glaston is in the process of transferring the production of mobility and display pre-processing equipment products from Glaston Switzerland to Glaston’s factory in Tianjin. In addition to production operations, supply chain management and development will be led and developed globally.
- Service supply and development will focus on global spare parts-related operations and development, including global warehouses and supply chains as well as global service development. The recruitment for the position of EVP service supply and development will start.
Changes in the executive leadership team
In connection with the planned organizational changes, Miika Äppelqvist, currently SVP architecture, is appointed chief solutions and operations officer, in effect Jan. 1, 2025.
Also, in connection with the planned organizational changes, as of Jan. 1, 2025, the SVP mobility, display and solar business area role would no longer be part of Glaston’s executive leadership team.
Starting January 2025, Glaston’s executive leadership team constitutes of:
- Toni Laaksonen, President & CEO
- Sasu Koivumäki, Chief Sales Officer
- Riikka Laitasalo, SVP People and Culture
- Kaisa Latva, General Counsel
- Päivi Lindqvist, Chief Financial Officer
- Miika Äppelqvist, Chief Solutions & Operations Officer
- N.N., EVP Service Supply & Development (to be recruited)
“We want to enhance the customer experience by strengthening resources in the customer frontline in addition to building industry-leading customer support and services. We will extend our focus on services and increase investments in regional resources, global spare parts operations and systematic global service process development. Accelerating our progress in improving profitability and operational excellence will be addressed by further optimizing Glaston’s global reach in production operations and supply chain to fully utilize the efficiency potential,” says Glaston President and CEO Toni Laaksonen.
