Oliver flower
“Where Porsche starts, we drive to victory,” quotes the Porsche CEO the company founder Ferdinand Porsche.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
StuttgartOliver flower is a passionate footballer and played in the club Libero. “A position that no longer exists today,” notes the tall figure PorscheBoss who makes his black shirts even slimmer than he is anyway. At that time, most tots wanted to play like Franz Beckenbauer,
Libero means translated “free man” and describes the central position in the defense without opponent with the main task to iron out mistakes of the teammates. Therefore, the British called the position sweeper. Until Franz Beckenbauer came and shaped the modern offensive Libero. The man who holds a team together, the game with occasional advances leads out from behind as otherwise only the forward acting playmaker.
Even if the position in modern football no longer exists, for the Volkswagen Group she describes the role of flower quite well. Because flower is not only Porsche boss, but also for the whole Production planning in the group responsible. While VW boss Herbert Diess as budget, sometimes eccentric captain vorwirbelt forwardFlower is holding the shop behind.
This shocked the entire industry last week with its push to focus solely on electromobility. Above all the suppliers fear that they have less time to change their production. Not only billions are invested in the fire, but for the electric motors it requires significantly less employees than for internal combustion engines.
Current club events
Bosch speaks of a factor of ten to one. Blume praises Das’s announcement as the necessary step. “Only the attractive offer makes the market. In the end, neither Herbert Dies nor I can influence when the world goes electric, “said Blume.
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But incidentally, he mentions that the changeover phase will take ten years. So exactly the period that Bosch CEO Volkmar Denner believes in the transformation of needs. Flower can smooth waves. This testifies to diplomatic skill, but also to a healthy self-confidence. This is from BMW come. Presumably, the 60-year-old will remain at the helm for four to five years.
Fast rise in the group
But then: Flower is a homebuild of the VW Group. Born in Brunswick, he studied mechanical engineering in his hometown and later did his doctorate in Shanghai. The 50-year-old initially went through stations in the VW group Audi and Seat. In 2009 he took over the production planning in the VW headquarters. He knows almost all 120 group plants – from the inside.
From 2013 he was production manager at Porsche and built the production of the small terrain car Macan on. With these merits, he rose in October 2015 to Porsche boss, as successor to Matthias Müller, who moved to Wolfsburg as Group CEO. So far, the diesel crisis promoted Blum’s career. As a production specialist, unlike engine developers, he is considered untouched.
Blum’s role has long since expanded. He has additional corporate functions. In Wolfsburg he is responsible for the luxury cars Bentley and Bugatti, but even more important for the entire production planning of the group. No one in the group knows better than Blume, not even Diess.
Blume has played “Back to the Future” for the entire corporation and extrapolated for each of the 120 works, as its mission in 2030 will look and change. And on this basis he derives the current measures. A mental mammoth venture. The most well-known example: The factory in Mosel is completely converted to the production of electric cars.
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Hardly anyone would save on a Porsche return of almost 17 percent, but Blume does. Because the strategist desperately wants to save this luxury return even in the electric age. He meticulously put together a package of 1,200 individual measures: from more rational product development with the help of more simulation to smaller measures such as reducing travel budgets. Blum’s strategic and operational capabilities have not gone unnoticed by the owner families Porsche and Piech.
New leadership style
His prudent nature may suit him. Even the powerful works council leader Bernd Osterloh appreciates Blum’s factual unpretentious leadership style. He also benefits the employees that he is a group-owned company and knows all Wolfsburg’s faux pas.
After the balance sheet conference, he drives in the elevator into the underground car park of the Porsche Museum. There is a new Macan Turbo, which the boss tests over the weekend. But before that, he still goes into the quality control of the prototype production of the Taycan, the first electric Porsche, which comes at the end of the summer and has 20,000 pre-orders.
Blume is the man who leads Porsche into a new era. And he does not want to leave anything to chance. Only with a clearly better vehicle can Porsche Tesla out of the field. “Where Porsche starts, we go for victory”, quoted Blume as the founder of the company, Ferdinand Porsche.
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And flower has a natural virtue, which was often neglected in Wolfsburg in the past, he does not cover up flaws, but tries to disclose them. He leads with transparency and team spirit. What was already designed by managers of the generation Winterkorn as weakness. He has his own style, listens for a long time, but is anything but weak in decision making.
He does not like to ask how he felt the years with the turbulence of the diesel crisis with leadership changes and prosecution, but then says: “You have to keep calm” – one would like to say once Franz Beckenbauer, who is beset by opponents in his own penalty area, with an outside kick pass from the ankle initiated the counterattack. In the future, nobody will miss the flower in the VW Group.
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