Aerospace and Defense

About Gernot

A native of Germany, Gernot has worked out of Munich and Cleveland, and is now based in Hong Kong, leading our Operations Practice in the Asia-Pacific region. He has served clients in various industry sectors, with most of his recent work focused on operational strategy and performance improvement in the aerospace, automotive, high tech and transportation.

Gernot has served clients in over 20 countries in North and South America, Europe Asia and Australia, and many of Gernot’s projects are international in nature. For instance, he has helped automotive and aerospace manufacturers explore and establish joint ventures in China. Other projects have involved supporting lean manufacturing transformations at aerospace, automotive, and telecom companies; advising a telecom equipment and a bus manufacturer on the optimization of their global footprint; helping to improve a satellite manufacturer’s supply chain and manufacturing processes; reducing the product cost of a helicopter through design-to-value; overseeing a quality improvement program for a European car manufacturer; sourcing an Asian product of a global truck manufacturer from China, India and Thailand.

Gernot earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Kaiserslautern before pursuing a master’s in aeronautical engineering and a doctorate in mechanical engineering from the University of Technology Munich. Before joining McKinsey in 1993, he spent five years as a scientific researcher in the field of applied laser diagnostics in combustion engineering, working under international government contracts and for leading automotive and aerospace companies.

Published work

“Global production: A handbook for strategy and implementation,” Springer, February, 2008

“Unternehmen Lean,” (German edition “Journey to Lean”), Campus, February, 2005

“Optical measurements: techniques and applications,” Springer, September, 2001

Past experience

Education