Christian Fieg
Head of Sales bei SYMESTIC. Zuvor iTAC, Dürr, Visteon. Six Sigma Black Belt. Autor von „OEE: Eine Zahl, viele Lügen".
I have been working in the manufacturing industry for over 25 years, and the core question has always been the same:
How do you get reliable data from the shop floor into the hands of decision-makers?
I started in 1998 as a maintenance engineer at Johnson Controls in Rastatt, Germany:
After that, three years as a Six Sigma Black Belt in headliner manufacturing, where I learned the DMAIC process not from textbooks but on real production lines. From 2003, I developed shop floor standards as a PLC engineer for JIT and interiors plants and supported facilities during launch and crisis phases.
In 2006, I went to Changchun, China as an expatriate:
There I helped bring a plant to best-in-class level. After returning, I took on global responsibility for MES and traceability at Johnson Controls as Team Leader Business Analyst: over 900 connected machines, more than 750 users, 30+ manufacturing processes in solder mount technology, assembly and injection molding, across sites in China, Mexico, the USA, Tunisia, Macedonia, France and Russia.
At Visteon Corporation, I managed the global MES program end-to-end as Manager Center of Excellence:
From process requirements through deployment to operations and support. At iTAC Software, I was Sales Manager MES for the DACH market before moving to Dürr.
Since 2021, I have been at SYMESTIC:
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 implementations took 12-18 months and consumed six-figure budgets, I experienced for the first time a system that is productive within hours while still delivering the full feature set of a professional MES.
In 2025, I published the book "OEE: Eine Zahl, viele Lügen" (OEE: One Number, Many Lies):
It tells the story of a manufacturing engineer who discovers that the OEE values in her plant are being systematically embellished. The book is a wake-up call for everyone who manages by metrics: what matters is not the number itself, 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: lack of transparency, embellished numbers, decisions based on gut feeling. The solution is never the software alone. The solution is a different relationship with truth in production.
Career
Since 2021: symestic GmbH, Head of Sales. Responsible for sales and market development of SYMESTIC Cloud MES.
2018-2021: Dürr AG, Senior Sales Manager.
2015-2018: iTAC Software AG, Sales Manager MES (DACH).
2013-2015: Visteon Corporation, Manager Center of Excellence. Global MES program responsibility end-to-end.
2006-2013: Johnson Controls Automotive Electronics, Team Leader Business Analyst Global Electronics. Global MES and traceability responsibility. 900+ machines, 750+ users.
2006: FAWER Johnson Controls, Expatriate, Changchun, China.
1998-2006: Johnson Controls Automotive. Maintenance Engineer, Six Sigma Black Belt, PLC Engineer JIT Center of Excellence.
Areas of expertise
Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), OEE, shop floor digitalization, Six Sigma (Black Belt), traceability, smart factory, production data collection, PLC programming, JIT/JIS processes, automotive manufacturing, global MES rollouts, cloud MES.
Publication
OEE: Eine Zahl, viele Lügen (2025). Why a low but honest OEE is worth more than a perfect one that lies.
Contact
Email: christian.fieg@symestic.com
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