The german company siemens is one of the world's great engineering conglomerates manufacturing everything from hearing aids and medical scanners to giant power generation turbines, wind systems, and locomotives. by the late 2000s, however, siemens was struggling with subpar performance relative to its global rivals such as general electric (ge), honeywell, and united technologies. in july 2007, siemens hired peter löscher as ceo, replacing klaus kleinfeld, and gave him the task of trying to revitalize the organization. löscher, an austrian whose career included major leadership positions at ge and merck, was the first outsider to run siemens since the company's establishment in 1847 n 2007, loscher inherited a global organization of significant complexity. at the time, siemens had 475,000 employees and revenues of s72 billion, operated in a wide range of industries, and had activities in more than 190 countries. as a comparison, today, siemens employs about 362,000 people, with revenues of about s79 billion, and covers a similar number of country markets. at the time, siemens was organized into 12 operating groups, which were further subdivided into 70 business divisions. although each division had its own product focus, such as wind power or molecular imaging, siemens worked hard to deliver integrated solutions to customers. this required many of the 70 business divisions to cooperate with each other on large projects. siemens also had a strong tradition of local responsiveness. the countries where the company was the most active had their own executive manager, known as "mr. ms. siemens." this individual acted as the country manager for all of siemens businesses in a specific geography and was also the ceo of the respective local company. the operating group and business division structure was often replicated within the local company. this resulted in a matrix organization, with the head of the power generation business in, for example, argentina, reporting to the local country ceo and to the global head of the business division. it was the responsibility of mr. ms. siemens and his or her staff to manage relations with local customers, develop bids for projects, and ensure that business divisions cooperated on the delivery of a project. local companies were given significant discretion over product specifications for local clients.