In Dialog with Inka Koljonen

MAN achieved what you describe as a historic turnaround in 2023. Why was this turnaround necessary?
For decades, MAN reported very volatile and often poor results. Repeated restructuring efforts did not succeed, and it became clear that incremental measures would not be sufficient. The company needed a fundamental reset to rebuild resilience and achieve sustainable profitability in the highly cyclical truck industry.

What have you changed?
I’d put it differently – what haven’t we changed? We have made significant changes in nearly all areas …

… please give us some insights.
We touched on all departments, all business segments, all countries, almost everything. We followed a holistic approach, redesigning our structures, implementing target measures, and fundamentally improving the way the organization operates. To name just a few: We substantially transformed our industrial setup. We optimized the manufacturing footprint, reduced complexity, and significantly increased the share of production in best-cost countries – including withdrawing from certain locations. Additionally, in engineering, we reduced complexity and shifted investments toward future technologies such as battery electric vehicles, digitalization and scalable platforms, while relocating selected activities to best cost countries.

And did you also have to change your steering model and your culture?
Yes, indeed. A key shift was moving towards true end to end responsibility and customer-centric steering. This required a much higher level of discipline in steering, transparency, and governance across the company. But above all, we anchored a new culture: Profitability is now non-negotiable and we successfully transformed MAN into a cash-driven organization.

What were the results of this turnaround?
It fundamentally changed the way MAN operates, and you can see that in the numbers. After decades with 2–3% return on sales or even being in the red, we managed the turnaround in 2023 with a return on sales of 7.3%. And our successfully anchored cash culture throughout the whole company translated into very strong cash generation and put us at the top end of our peers.

What really is striking is how MAN managed to deliver stable results also in 2024 and 2025 as markets sharply declined. Did you take additional measures?
This was a crucial stress test. In 2024, truck volumes dropped sharply by 24% and we still managed to deliver a return on sales of 6.7%. On the one hand, this proved the sustainability of our turnaround and our increased robustness. On the other hand, we also took decisive and fast action to cope with the strong market headwinds. 2025 with 6.4% return on sales in an ongoing weak truck market environment even underlined our strengthened robustness.

What actions did you take?
We institutionalized short term management programs which are automatically triggered in market downturns. These include strict cost discipline, capacity adjustments, and close monitoring of pricing and purchasing, while still ensuring investments in key technologies. One success factor was the set-up of a holistic cost price council which embraces rapid, fact based, cross functional decision making. We tremendously and continuously increased our robustness with these measures – year by year.

Summarized: What has MAN achieved with the turnaround?
Significantly more strategic freedom. Restored profitability and a firmly anchored cash driven culture now enable us to invest actively in our industry’s transformation towards e-mobility and automation. And at the same time, we successfully changed the way we work together as one strong team. In a nutshell: We tremendously increased our robustness and made the company future-proof. Ultimately, our cash generation performance is now among the best compared to our peers.

And how do you prepare for the future?
The environment remains challenging with rising competition, fast-moving digital transformation, and increasing regulatory pressure. Thus, we are already working today on shaping our future, becoming even more resilient and competitive. That is why we’ve launched our long term program MAN2030+, aligned with the works council.

What’s the aim of this program?
It aims to reduce costs by around €900 million. At the same time, it secures the jobs of all current employees in Germany at least until the end of 2035 or even beyond. In addition, we continue to invest massively in our products and our production sites as well as in sales and service – strengthening competitiveness and safeguarding long term growth. An important part of MAN2030+ is also the implementation of an international organization for Global Business Services. This will bundle and harmonize our processes across countries and functions, thereby further improving our cost position. Moreover, we have kicked off additional initiatives to even further enhance our competitiveness – such as our initiatives for quality and service as well as for AI.

AI is on everyone’s lips. How are you approaching AI at MAN?
AI is of utmost importance to us. The opportunities of AI are enormous. We have just recently launched a holistic AI initiative, sponsored by the board. Our focus is on cross-functional end-to-end use cases transforming and embedding AI into our core industry processes. With the goal to unlock efficiencies, increase productivity, foster topline growth – and ultimately drive the overall experience for our customers.

How would you describe MAN today compared to five years ago?
Today, MAN is acting from a position of strength. You can count on MAN. We have rebuilt our foundation, strengthened our resilience, and established a clear strategic direction. Most importantly, we have transformed how we operate and now act as one strong team. That’s the real success of our turnaround – collectively achieved by our 33,000 employees.