Herbert Diess is the new CEO of Volkswagen. As the successor of Matthias Müller, he faces great challenges. In the first few hours he already shows what to expect from him.
Friday, 13.04.2018
16:57 clock
The location at Volkswagen 
reminiscent of a divorce. The former husband raised the children, and they do not like to talk about him in public. The surprisingly dismissed CEO Matthias Müller should even continue to advise the maternal company.
Accordingly, supervisory board chief Hans Dieter Pötsch and the Austrian manager Herbert Diess, who has replaced Müller, strive to leave out any criticism of the ex-boss. “It’s about development and not a revolution,” says the 59-year-old Diess on Friday at his first public appearance as the new CEO.
VW is currently working on the largest conversion ever in its history. The individual brand groups “Volume” (with VW, Skoda and Seat), “Premium” (Audi) and “Super Premium” (Porsche, Bentley, Bugatti and, in the future, also Lamborghini) are to be introduced. For the truck and bus commercial vehicle unit, the prerequisites for an IPO should also be created, according to SPIEGEL information should flush up to seven billion euros into the group cash,
Pötsch on Müller: “Cultural change initiated”
Nevertheless, the former brand and new CEO Diess, who will also jointly responsible for the volume business “volume” in future, says, with regard to the structural change started by Müller: “There is no reason to doubt the course taken.”
Only: But if everything should remain the same and yourself Müller’s balance sheet can be seen – why did he have to leave then?
To the reasons silent Diess and Pötsch wordy. Pötsch reads slowly at the presentation of the new from the sheet, as if he is afraid to say something wrong. He praises Müller exuberantly. “He has initiated the necessary cultural change,” also VW is economically as well as never, says Pötsch.
“Only the one who does nothing makes no mistakes,” Pötsch continues. You just wanted a team that was still there when the consequences of the changes were felt. However, Müller should also stay with VW for years – and should collect a lot of money for it. His future role: unclear.
This wants to promote decentralization
With diesel crisis, loss of confidence, the digitization of the car and the impending electric turn Volkswagen is facing major challenges. It’s about accelerating the transformation, says Pötsch. Also in the leadership there had to be a “development”. Between the lines, it can be seen that the Supervisory Board did not move fast enough to the change initiated by Müller in the world’s largest carmaker with more than 600,000 employees.
So now the radical cure. “Better a union of ships than a battleship,” Diess says about the brand’s new structure. Digitization should be a cross-cutting task. The areas of production, development and distribution of the individual groups should be re-sorted. VW wants to save a lot of money.
Among the most important further changes in the VW Group include:
The brand groups are now each responsible for the CEOs. In addition to Diess (volume), Audi CEO Rupert Stadler (Premium) and Porsche CEO Oliver Blume (Super Premium). Blume is also moving up to the Group Executive Board.
With the previous Secretary General of the Group Works Council, Gunnar Kilian, VW gets a new personnel board. The successor of Karlheinz Blessing is considered the confidant of works council chief Bernd Osterloh, who thus his Power can expand, The IG Metall boss and vice chairman of the VW supervisory board, Jörg Hofmann, was pleased about it.
The purchasing director of the VW brand, Ralf Brandstätter, is provisionally joining the Group Executive Board. Purchasing Director Francisco Javier Garcia Sanz was his dismissal preempted,
But does Diess manage to modernize VW fast enough? He does not shy away from controversial debates – like his predecessor. While Müller his partly harsh-looking statements have been interpreted as weaknesses, the statements of Topmanager Diess so far are regarded as evidence of his self-confidence. This could say even uncontradicted in the ARD program “Anne Will”: “Our diesel are the best in the world.”
That Diess criticism, speaks first for him. As chief executive, the attack surface is likely to be larger. Of the green-Bundestagsfraktionschef Anton Hofreiter already called: “He finally has the diesel affair enlighten and clear the table. “
How much this process is still stalling, a scene that the “HandelsblattAccording to this, Supervisory Board chief Pötsch had all the board members meeting in a meeting room with them and raping them separately in the adjoining room in the next room, if they were planned or not in the future, then they were allowed back and had to send in the next one ,
This is more reminiscent of old school management – a really open handling of the exhaust gas scandal or a reappraisal of the exhaust gas tests on monkeys seem in the light of far in the future.