Joachim Gorzel is Vice President Digital Cement Operations at Heidelberg Materials. He joined the company in 1993 as an Automation and Electrical Engineer. Since then, working on various positions and in various responsible roles at Heidelberg Cement company, (today: Heidelberg Materials). Starting from an engineer position in a maintenance department at a cement plant. Between 2006 and 2015 he was Head of Engineering at a regional Technical Center and in charge of many Capex projects world-wide, including new green-field plants. Between 2015 and 2020 he was a Technical Director for some cement some plants in Africa. Since 2020 he is responsible for Heidelberg Materials’ strategic digitalization initiative called HProduce. This initiative is embedded in the HM Group Strategy and targets to improve production cost efficiency, reduce environmental footprint.

The Pop in My Job:

The most what I like in my job, and at each position, is the variety of the challenges and opportunities to make a visible impact on the operation or processes. Mainly the source of motivation are complex technical projects, initiatives or challenges that require a good teamwork and ability to find the optimal result within given constrains and capabilities. In addition, it is worth to mention, Cement industry offers plenty of unique opportunities to become responsible for important assignments along with a freedom to decide the best way how to master it, of course according to some rules. This makes the job very interesting because there is just a little space for a routine and every day is different!