With an MBA in Leadership and Sustainability, Ewald’s life wisdom is “Nothing is so bad that it’s not good for something”, and his life motto follows Henry Ford’s: “Don’t find fault; find a remedy.” His pragmatism and belief in people help him achieve sustainable change even with change-resistant people, and his aversion to the word “impossible” helps him realise his goals.
Related cases
Performance varied greatly, and that had to stop
One of the world’s largest steel producers was midway through a five-year programme to perform consistently at world-class level. At its largest plant, the hope was that Six Sigma would eliminate the remaining process variation. The team discovered that half of that variation came from well-intentioned interventions by the operators themselves. The pilot delivered far…
Growth swamped the innovation department
Growing demand for new product variants and engineering changes swamped the innovation department of a fast-growing electronics company. Design errors only came to light in production, crash actions pushed aside projects that were on schedule, and hiring more engineers made things worse. Within six months of starting work with Axisto, output was reliable again, and…
The new system was actually costing the engineers time
It turned out that the Engineers had to perform a lot of repetitive, manual, clicking, copying, and pasting that suit RPA well. The implementation of RPA has saved 5.5 man-years — and the savings still continue to grow.
Related insights
Why so many Industry 4.0 projects stall before they deliver real value
Industry 4.0 projects rarely stall because of technology. They stall because organisations approach digitalisation as a technology trajectory, while real value only emerges when strategy, operations, governance, leadership and behaviour change alongside it. That is the core of the problem. And precisely why many CEOs and COOs see that the digital ambition in their organisation…
AI and Agentic Automation in 2026
From Pilots to Industrial-Scale Performance AI is no longer the constraint. Execution with clear ROI is. Across industrial organisations, AI pilots have multiplied, tools have matured, and investment continues to grow. Yet many leaders see a familiar pattern: promising experiments that don’t translate into sustained operational performance, because they never scale into the processes, roles,…
Europe’s ESG Pay Pivot: Between Purpose and Pragmatism
Europe isn’t abandoning ESG leadership—it’s refining it. The continent’s strong regulatory foundations, from CSRD to SFDR, remain intact. But implementation is now being tempered by calls for flexibility, competitiveness, and industrial relevance. This isn’t about ESG versus growth. It’s about ESG for resilient growth. And that’s not idealism. That’s smart governance.