Dr. Richard Robinson Smith

Rob Smithborn in 1965, joined the KION Group as Chief Executive Officer at the beginning of 2022. He joins from the publicly listed Finnish company KONECRANES, where he served as President and CEO. Prior to that, Rob Smith gained more than two decades of senior management experience in the USA and Europe at AGCO Corporation, TRW Automotive, Tyco Electronics, Bombardier Transportation, Dell Computer Corporation and Delphi Automotive.

He was born in Augsburg, Germany, and began his academic career at Princeton University, Princeton/New Jersey (USA), where he graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in 1987. He then studied business administration at the University of Texas at Austin Graduate School of Business, Austin/Texas (USA) and at WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management Koblenz (Germany), where he obtained a Master of Business Administration in 1992 and a German Diplom-Kaufmann degree in 1994. Rob Smith received his doctorate in 2001 from WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management Koblenz (Germany) with a dissertation on "International Operations Management".

Rob Smith is a non-executive member of the Board of Directors of the listed company FLSMIDTH & CO A/S in Copenhagen, Denmark, and a board member of the non-listed American Chamber of Commerce in Germany. He has also been a non-executive member of the Board of Directors of the listed Weichai Power Co. Ltd. in Weifang, People's Republic of China, since 2023.