Norimitsu Ito will take over the office of CEO of Harmonic Drive AG on 13/01/2020. This was announced today by the Supervisory Board of the company at the company's Limburg site.
Norimitsu Ito will succeed Ekrem Sirman as the new CEO, who left Harmonic Drive AG on 2019 December 31st after 14 years. Ito has been COO of the company since 2017.
"With Norimitsu Ito, an internationally experienced manager is taking over as Chairman of the Board of Management, who, with agile leadership, is striving for new creative freedom in order to exploit further company potential. He will drive forward technological innovations combined with efficiency and profitability in order to successfully serve our important future markets,” says Gottfried Bertram, Supervisory Board of Harmonic Drive AG, confidently.
In addition, Thomas Berger was appointed CFO and Peter Hantl was appointed new CSO/CMO by the Supervisory Board. Both are experienced and successful managers whose expertise the Supervisory Board will rely on in the future.
CFO Berger will focus on finance, controlling, human resources and digitalization. The new CSO/CMO Board Member Hantl sees his core tasks in the expansion of international sales structures and strategic product and brand development, as well as the associated strengthening of technology leadership and profitability.
"With this experienced management team, we have all the prerequisites to further advance our future as a technology leader with foresight, while not losing our medium-sized corporate culture. We wish the new board members of Harmonic Drive AG good luck for the current and future challenges," comments Akira Nagai, Chairman of the Supervisory Board.
"As the new Management Board team, we will take on important, different perspectives in order to establish new, innovative business models with strong growth prospects," Ito formulates the new company orientation. We will further expand and strengthen various key competencies of our company," concludes Ito.
The current majority shareholder, Harmonic Drive Systems Inc., Tokyo, was a shareholder of Harmonic Drive AG for many years and has contributed to the successful development of the company.
Caption from left to right:
Thomas Berger (CFO), Gottfried Bertram (Supervisory Board), Norimitsu Ito (CEO), Peter Hantl (CSO/CMO).