New CEO and Chairman of the Management Board 

Now the Ham­burg-based fam­i­ly-owned com­pa­ny Pfan­nen­berg has appoint­ed Dr. Tobias Merl as Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer (CEO) of the Pfan­nen­berg Group. On Jan­u­ary 1, 2022, Merl will suc­ceed Andreas Pfan­nen­berg, who has led the com­pa­ny as Man­ag­ing Part­ner since 1995 and is now mov­ing to the Super­vi­so­ry Board. 

Found­ed in 1954 by Otto Pfan­nen­berg, the medi­um-sized group of com­pa­nies sup­plies its cus­tomers world­wide with com­po­nents and sys­tem solu­tions in the field of con­trol cab­i­net cli­mate con­trol as well as sig­nal tech­nol­o­gy. Thanks to its glob­al posi­tion­ing, the com­pa­ny is rep­re­sent­ed in many indus­tries and today pro­tects peo­ple, machines and the envi­ron­ment in numer­ous man­u­fac­tur­ing processes. 

Tobias Merl start­ed his pro­fes­sion­al career as a man­age­ment con­sul­tant at the Com­pe­tence Cen­trum mit­tel­ständis­che Indus­trie (CCMI) and earned a part-time doc­tor­ate in Man­age­ment & Engi­neer­ing before join­ing Pfan­nen­berg in 2016 as Busi­ness Devel­op­ment Man­ag­er. In this role, he was respon­si­ble for build­ing up prod­uct man­age­ment and devel­op­ing new busi­ness areas. Since 2020, he has been a mem­ber of the Man­age­ment Board as Chief Inno­va­tion Offi­cer (CIO) and has made a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to fur­ther increas­ing the com­pa­ny’s inno­va­tion capa­bil­i­ties. Merl is con­sid­ered an expert in inno­va­tion strate­gies and trans­for­ma­tion processes. 

As part of the fam­i­ly, Merl is con­tin­u­ing the suc­cess sto­ry of the tra­di­tion­al com­pa­ny in the next gen­er­a­tion. The focus here is on the vision of “One Pfan­nen­berg for Our Cus­tomers,” with which the com­pa­ny is focus­ing on its strength of bring­ing forth inno­va­tions in close cus­tomer contact.

“Spe­cial­ized teams will ensure that for each prod­uct area, the needs and con­cerns of our cus­tomers are clear­ly put in the fore­ground and that advice, prod­ucts and ser­vices are geared towards indi­vid­ual added val­ue. Sup­port­ed by dig­i­tal­iza­tion, we can thus offer a unique cus­tomer expe­ri­ence worldwide.”

- Tobias Merl