Skip to content
Styling lives in css/templates/_author.css (scoped under .author-page). ============================================================ #}
Christian Fieg
Head of Sales · SYMESTIC GmbH

Christian Fieg

Head of Sales at SYMESTIC. More than 25 years of MES and shopfloor digitalization. Six Sigma Black Belt. Author of „OEE: Eine Zahl, viele Lügen“ (“OEE: One Number, Many Lies”).

I have worked in the manufacturing industry for more than 25 years – and the subject was the same from the very beginning:
How do you get reliable data from the shopfloor into the hands of decision-makers?

I started in 1998 as a maintenance engineer at Johnson Controls in Rastatt.
After that came three years as a Six Sigma Black Belt in headliner production, where I learned the DMAIC process not from books but on real production lines. From 2003 I developed shopfloor standards for JIT and interior plants as a PLC engineer and supported plants during ramp-up and crisis phases.

In 2006 I went to Changchun, China as an expatriate.
There I brought a plant up to best-in-class level. Afterwards, as Team Leader Business Analyst, I took on global responsibility for MES and traceability at Johnson Controls: more than 900 connected machines, over 750 users, 30+ manufacturing processes in soldering, assembly and injection moulding, spread across sites in China, Mexico, the USA, Tunisia, Macedonia, France and Russia.

At Visteon Corporation, as Manager Center of Excellence, I ran the global MES programme end-to-end.
From process requirements through deployment to operations. At iTAC Software I was responsible for MES sales in the DACH market as Sales Manager before moving to Dürr.

I have been with SYMESTIC since 2021.
Here I am responsible for sales and market development of the cloud-native MES. What convinced me about SYMESTIC: after years at companies where MES rollouts took 12–18 months and consumed six-figure budgets, I experienced for the first time a system that goes live in hours and still offers the full feature set of a professional MES.

In 2025 I published the book „OEE: Eine Zahl, viele Lügen“ (“OEE: One Number, Many Lies”).
In it I tell the story of a manufacturing engineer who discovers that the OEE figures at her plant are being systematically embellished. The book is a wake-up call for anyone who leads with metrics: it is not the number itself that matters, but what you learn from it.

What drives me:
I have rolled out MES systems on four continents and seen the same problems recur everywhere: a lack of transparency, embellished figures, decisions based on gut feeling. The solution is never the software alone.

The solution is a different way of dealing with truth on the production floor.

Career

Career Path

since 2021
Head of Sales · SYMESTIC GmbH
Responsible for sales and market development of the SYMESTIC Cloud MES.
2018 – 2021
Senior Sales Manager · Dürr AG
Sales of MES and manufacturing solutions.
2015 – 2018
Sales Manager MES (DACH) · iTAC Software AG
MES sales for the DACH market.
2013 – 2015
Manager Center of Excellence · Visteon Corporation
Global responsibility for the MES programme end-to-end.
2006 – 2013
Team Leader Business Analyst · Johnson Controls Automotive Electronics
Global MES and traceability responsibility. 900+ machines, 750+ users.
2006
Expatriate (plant setup) · FAWER Johnson Controls, Changchun/China
Brought a plant up to best-in-class level.
1998 – 2006
Maintenance · Six Sigma · PLC · Johnson Controls Automotive
Maintenance engineer, Six Sigma Black Belt, PLC engineer in the JIT Center of Excellence.
Publication

Publication

„OEE: Eine Zahl, viele Lügen“ (“OEE: One Number, Many Lies”) (2025)
Why a low but genuine OEE is worth more than a perfect one that lies. — Amazon Kindle · ASIN B0FB9JZYNJ
Expertise

Areas of Expertise

Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)OEEShopfloor DigitalizationSix Sigma (Black Belt)TraceabilitySmart FactoryProduction Data CollectionPLC ProgrammingJIT / JIS ProcessesAutomotive ProductionGlobal MES RolloutsCloud MES
Contact

Get in touch