In the middle of the chip crisis, Volkswagen announces that the board’s procurement department will be filled on November 1st. The new board member is Karsten Schnake, is 57 years old and is taking on the position at Volkswagen in addition to his position as head of procurement for the Škoda group brand. The previous procurement director, 61-year-old Dirk Große-Loheide, will be leaving the company “as part of a longer-planned retirement plan,” according to a press release from Volkswagen. This wording is apparently intended to avoid the impression that the replacement of Große-Loheide is related to the current supply problems for chips, which could possibly even lead to production stops. As a precautionary measure, Volkswagen is examining the possibility of short-time work at various plants. The entire industry is confronted with the fact that the world chip market leader Nexperia has gotten into a geopolitical power struggle between the USA, the Netherlands and China. Car manufacturers in particular, all of which are only indirect customers of Nexperia, are worried about how long they can continue production. Between a hundred and 500 such chips are installed in various supplier parts in every car.More on the topicBut only at VW did the problem seem to be very urgent. The supply of these parts seems to be quickly becoming very scarce. It was therefore already planned that from next Wednesday the production lines in both the Golf production in Wolfsburg and the electric car plant in Zwickau would come to a standstill. In the meantime, Volkswagen managers have apparently used their influence as major customers and tried to open up new ways of procuring chips for their suppliers or even their suppliers. However, it is not yet certain whether this will succeed. A Volkswagen spokesman said that the situation is still dynamic. Karsten Schnake, who is now taking up his position as Procurement Director in this challenging situation, started at Volkswagen in 1996 as a project manager and was later responsible, among other things, for strategic purchasing and procurement management at Volkswagen China. He has been Procurement Director at Skoda since 2020. Volkswagen boss Oliver Blume has words of praise for the previous procurement director, Dirk Große-Loheide. “In challenging times, Dirk Große-Loheide realigned procurement and developed a future-oriented purchasing strategy,” Blume is quoted in the press release.
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