D he after a power struggle with the supplier ZF Retired former CEO Stefan Sommer changes to the world’s largest carmaker. There, he takes over a VW release on Monday evening according to the procurement department. Sommer follows the long-term purchasing director Francisco Javier Garcia Sanz, who left the group at his own request.
Volkswagen announced that the Supervisory Board had appointed Sommer effective January 1, 2019 for the resort. The car maker thus closes a gap in the Group Executive Board. Almost all members of the Executive Board – with the exception of two – were appointed only after the announcement of the exhaust gas scandal in September 2015. Even summer comes unloaded to Wolfsburg. This was also reported by the Handelsblatt and Auto Motor und Sport.
The 55-year-old doctorate in mechanical engineering had thrown in ZF last December because of a dispute over the future orientation of the Group with the most important ZF owner representative – the mayor of the city of Friedrichshafen. Sommer had taken over the position of head of the auto parts supplier in May 2012.
Now the manager at VW not only receives more power than his predecessor, the supplier experts are also waiting for major tasks: last October it became known that Volkswagen bundles the in-house supplier and component plants in its own division. In addition, in April sees the new CEO Herbert Diess Group Reconstruction planned to combine purchasing and component plants in the unit procurement / component. This should make the group less centrally managed in the future.
In the future, Sommer will not only be responsible for procurement, but also for the component plants. The division has 56 factories worldwide, including gearboxes, engines and chassis elements with around 80,000 employees. The purpose of the specially created division is, according to earlier data, to make the internal business with components, which are also used in models of VW subsidiaries, more efficient with regard to e-mobility. A sale or IPO is not planned.
For this, the EU should make trouble with its limits summer: Works Council Bernd Osterloh warned in the “Wolfsburger Allgemeine Zeitung”, the future CO2 limits could threaten many jobs in the auto industry. At Volkswagen, this would primarily affect the component factories where engines or transmissions are built.
According to the proposal of the European Commission, the fleet limit of 95 grams of CO2 for 2020 will be further reduced – by 15 percent by 2025 and by 30 percent by 2030. However, leading politicians wanted tougher provisions of minus 50 percent or minus 75 percent by 2030, criticized Osterloh , “If so decided in the European Parliament, then we can forget about car-building in Germany.” That would mean the loss of tens of thousands of jobs in the auto industry.
In the procurement sector, for example, Sommer has to deal with the continuing smoldering conflict between the Wolfsburg-based company and the Bosnian entrepreneurial family Hastor with its Prevent supply group. The new VW purchasing manager must change sides in the future – and build up pressure on supplier companies themselves.