KUALA LUMPUR: Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft has announced its plan to realign the group.
CEO Matthias Müller presented a five-point plan to keep Volkswagen as one of the world’s leading automobile manufacturers in the future.
He said in a statement on Wednesday that he is confident that Volkswagen will emerge stronger than before.
He added that the cornerstones of the group’s Strategy 2025 will be presented next year.
Müller said the top priority is to support the customers affected by the diesel issue. “Our customers are at the core of everything that our 600,000 employees worldwide do,” he said.
Volkswagen is working intensively to develop effective technical solutions. Implementation is expected to start in January 2016.
Müller’s second priority is to systematically drive forward and complete the investigation into what happened. “We must uncover the truth and learn from it”, he said. The company has engaged audit firm Deloitte to assist in the matter.
His third priority is to introduce new structures within the group. “The key point is that group management will be decentralised to a greater extent in the future”, he said. This would mean there would be more independence for the brands and regions.
Management will focus on addressing cross-brand strategies, leveraging synergies and ensuring that resources are used effectively. “We will review in detail our current portfolio of more than 300 models and examine the contribution that each one makes to our earnings,” he said.
His fourth priority is to drive a realignment of the group’s culture and management behavior. He noted that the pursuit of perfection, the employees’ commitment and social responsibility in the Volkswagen Group must be retained. However, he believed that changes are necessary in how Volkswagen communicates and how it handles its mistakes.
“We need a culture of openness and cooperation,” Müller said.
He added that the fifth priority will be to transform the group’s Strategy 2018 into a Strategy 2025. “Many people outside of Volkswagen, but also some of us, did not understand that our Strategy 2018 is about much more than production numbers.
A lot of things were subordinated to the desire to be “Faster, Higher, Larger”, especially return on sales,” he said.
Müller added that the point is not to sell 100,000 more or fewer vehicles than a major competitor but rather the real issue is qualitative growth. Müller announced that the cornerstones of the group’s Strategy 2025 will be developed over the coming months, and that it would be unveiled mid-way through next year.
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