Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess said Wednesday that the company is taking measures to reduce development times and improve cost savings in its core (VW) brand.
To accelerate these efforts, Diess appointed new senior managers for each of Volkswagen’s four main product lines–small, compact, midsize and EV. These managers will have direct control over the products in their portfolios, allowing decisions to be made more quickly.
“We expect these changes to bring about a major acceleration in (vehicle) development,” Diess told the wire service. The new structure “strengthens cooperation across all functions and also increases the profitability of the brand.”
Diess plans to reduce investment costs by as much as 1 billion euros per year, according to Reuters. The company’s long-standing goal has been a profit margin of six percent. Slow growth in North- and South-American markets due to lagging shifts in product strategy have left Volkswagen falling short of that goal. Since Dieselgate, that target seems even more out of reach.
Volkswagen Group was working toward decentralizing its leadership long before the Dieselgate scandal. Back in June, the company announced a major restructuring that is currently being realized. Individual brands are to be grouped under one of four new holding companies.
By volume, the largest company is that overseeing Volkswagen, Skoda and Seat. The next rung up is a group comprised of Audi, Lamborghini and Italian motorcycle manufacturer Ducati. The top-tier group manages Bentley, Bugatti and Porsche.
The fourth group, which doesn’t represent a different tier so much as an entirely different sales channel, is to oversee the group’s commercial vehicle offerings, including MAN and Scania (VW-branded commercial vehicles will also be managed by this group).
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