Join us as we celebrate our 190th anniversary, and explore the inspiring journey of Iris Ladd, our dedicated German colleague who made a difference by introducing SAP to our organisation. From her humble beginnings as an electrician and radio officer, Iris's career at Wärtsilä took her on a path of growth and development, ultimately becoming one of the few experts in our Wärtsilä-SAP systems.
Iris Ladd’s journey at Wärtsilä began in 1992 with her retraining from being an electrician and radio officer to a wholesale and foreign trade clerk. In 1993, she completed an internship at the former Wärtsilä Diesel GmbH and was hired after successfully finishing her apprenticeship. She originally intended to stay on for five years only, but as Wärtsilä offered her numerous development opportunities in an international environment, she ultimately stayed with us for the rest of her career.
In the years following her apprenticeship, Iris gained a wide range of professional experience in spare parts sales, field service coordination and project work. Thanks to her extensive process knowledge, she also became part of the SAP project team that developed the brand-new SAP software for Wärtsilä Network Companies in Düsseldorf in 1998. She worked with other colleagues, programmers, and consultants to customise SAP to Wärtsilä’s processes. For almost 2 years, she flew to Düsseldorf every Monday and came back to Hamburg every Friday, worked 12-14 hours a day, and most importantly had a lot of fun.
The SAP project was an immense success and Iris was later involved in the roll-out in Germany, Spain, Denmark, United Kingdom, and USA in 1999 and 2000. She also introduced SAP internally and trained our Wärtsilians in the various modules. Today, SAP is a software company that offers solutions for managing business operations and customer relations to further our decarbonisation journey and help our customers and partners achieve net zero goals. To this day, Iris is still one of the few people worldwide who knows our Wärtsilä-SAP systems the best.
After the project was completed, Iris moved to the Service Controlling team and worked on other important projects and successfully implemented them within the company. On December 8, 2023, we said goodbye to our dedicated and competent colleague Iris Ladd after 30 years of service.
At Wärtsilä, we are always searching for bright minds and talented individuals to join us in our journey to shape the decarbonisation of marine and energy. If you share our passion of working with the industries that are leading the way towards net zero emissions, we invite you to explore the exciting opportunities that await you at Wärtsilä.
Discover your future at Wärtsilä
