Analytik Jena AG Expands Executive Management Board

At a meeting in September, the Supervisory Board of Analytik Jena AG (Germany) made the decision to expand the Company’s Executive Board. In this way, the Company is responding to its growth and the ever-increasing challenges associated with its operational business. The management body of the Jena-based technology Company will be expanded to include two new members in fall 2015 and a fifth area of responsibility in January 2016. This restructuring also lays the groundwork for appointing a successor to Klaus Berka, the Company founder and Chief Executive Officer, whose contract expires in March 2017.

Ulrich Krauss, who has more than two decades of experience in a variety of international management positions at Carl Zeiss, will be taking charge of the newly established Executive Board area of responsibility, Marketing and Sales, on November 1, 2015. Born in Baden-Württemberg, the 51-year-old had been a member of the Executive Board of Carl Zeiss Meditec AG in Jena for more than nine years before leaving in 2011 and assuming the position of CEO at Carl Zeiss Vision, Inc., in the US.

“I’m delighted that the Supervisory Board has appointed Ulrich Krauss, a manager with exceptional expertise and international experience, to the Executive Board of Analytik Jena,” says Klaus Berka. “Ulrich Krauss brings with him extensive international management and sales experience as well as a high customer orientation and long-standing experience in the high-tech industry.”

There will also be a new Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Analytik Jena AG. Dr. Peter Juschitz, who moved to Thuringia on October 1, 2015, will be in charge of Group manufacturing, purchasing and logistics. The 49-year-old Austrian was most recently Technical Director at cooling systems manufacturer AHT Cooling Systems in Rottenmann, Styria, and, for many years before that, CEO of Epcos Kft, a company in the TDK Group based in Szombathely, Hungary. Juschitz launched his career at electronics company Philips, where he held a variety of management positions for many years.

“Dr. Peter Juschitz is a very experienced manufacturing and logistics specialist, who will carry on the Analytik Jena philosophy of developing and manufacturing German-made products with expertise and passion,” adds Klaus Berka.

The Analytik Jena AG Supervisory Board and Executive Board were in agreement: Both Ulrich Krauss and Peter Juschitz distinguished themselves in a selection process initiated by majority shareholder Endress+Hauser at the beginning of 2015.

Analytik Jena AG will also establish its own Executive Board area of responsibility for Human Resources in 2016. The current Analytik Jena head of HR, Grit Petzholdt-Gühne (48), will assume the position of board member for human resources on January 1. Born in Dresden, Grit Petzholdt-Gühne had various responsibilities in HR management at Coca-Cola Erfrischungsgetränke AG and the former DaimlerChrysler Group, before heading human resources at Schott AG in Jena from 2004 to 2013. “With her efforts at Analytik Jena over the past two years, Ms. Petzholdt-Gühne has advanced the company’s HR activities to a high international level and impressed us all with her specialist knowledge and exceptional dedication,” says Berka.

CEO and Company founder Klaus Berka, as well as Stefan Döhmen, who has been Chief Financial Officer at Analytik Jena AG since 2006, will retain their seats on the Executive Board.

“Thanks to the new management, we consider ourselves to be well equipped for overcoming the increasing challenges of the laboratory segment and expanding the business of the two core areas of Analytik Jena – Analytical Instrumentation and Life Science – both in Germany and abroad,” says Andreas Krey, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Analytik Jena and CEO of the State Development Corporation of Thuringia. “The expanded Executive Board will represent both tradition and continuity for Analytik Jena at the Jena site, as well as a new generation of management, which will lead the Company as part of the Endress+Hauser Group into the next decade.”

The Supervisory Board will select Klaus Berka’s successor as CEO in 2016. Once he’s passed the baton on to the next Chief Executive Officer, Klaus Berka will join the Supervisory Board of Analytik Jena.   

“The current decisions regarding the management staff of Analytik Jena AG mark the beginning of a long-term generational change, which we at the Endress+Hauser Group would like to support. With Company founder Klaus Berka’s planned move to the Supervisory Board of Analytik Jena, we’re also ensuring continuity and experience,” says Matthias Altendorf, CEO of the Endress+Hauser Group.