Maggie ROBINSON
External Operations Buying director
Mars Europe
Jean-Paul and I worked together at Mars, sourcing products from suppliers around Europe. My responsibilities were on the buying side, and Jean-Paul headed up the R&D team.
I really appreciated the role Jean-Paul played. He was a business manager as well as a quality expert. He was pragmatic; his focus was on solutions that would work and that made sound business sense. He had a real understanding of what made a good, repeateable process, and of the measures needed to monitor whether we were successful. He was very committed, and would not stop until something was right. And he always delivered what he promised.
Jean-Paul was also a teacher: he taught me the things that mattered when you manage quality; he also taught me things that matter when you manage relationships with suppliers. There are many comanufacturing companies around Europe who still talk about the time that Jean-Paul invested in helping them improve their overall quality thinking and therefore their ability to target other "blue chip" customers.
Above all, I enjoyed working with Jean-Paul. He was a professional and he was also a friend. He was prepared to challenge me and he also welcomed being challenged himself. He was great to have in a team.
Maggie
