KEEPING THE PORTFOLIO PROFITABLE
support the brand values, and the market input into the development process must characteristics. The Golf R is a very good example of an ambassador product that demonstrates a lot of sportiness, is fun to drive, and has excellent driving dynamics.
We review our portfolio—including all new opportunities—twice a year with the VWoA executive team. This makes the most sense to us, because the required market research data is available in the same sequence.
AT HOME WITH HERBIE
As it happens, Michel was born the same year as Herbie, the “Love Bug” made famous in Disney movies. Here, Michel relaxes with Herbie in Bad Camberg, Germany, Michel’s hometown.
Q. How does Volkswagen of America build and sustain a workforce that can carry out its strategy successfully on a day- react to customer demand? In other words, how does it manage its people portfolio?
name some of the key parameters. How does your leadership philosophy sustain these principles?
A. Our leadership’s philosophy is always to really strive for the very best. That, I believe, is the difference between us and other car companies: We don’t compro- mise on product goals and targets. It’s easier in some ways to have the best prod- but all the way through its life cycle— rather than trying to be tactical. In big - cult to keep the entire workforce moving to the same goals, so when you’re striving for the very best, the risk of wrong inter- pretation and translation of those goals by different parties is much lower. It is important to stay ahead of the competi- tion by setting ambitious goals. A good example of our mindset is that we always want to win comparative tests in the media, which means that everyone in the organization is always pushing to be the best so as to not endanger this goal.
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Q. In line with how the Army approaches its Capability Portfolio Reviews for its tactical wheeled vehicles, network, and the like, can you tell us if Volkswagen has the future direction of the company?
A. - work, dividing it into two groups. There are core models, which are the backbone of VWoA and which will ensure the these, we have the so-called ambassador models, which support the brand values. Both groups receive absolute priority when it comes to investment in product and marketing efforts.
All products must be in line with the VW performance characteristics—best-in- class driving dynamics, and so on—which My team is continuously monitoring the market and investigating all business opportunities for the U.S. Any new prod- uct idea or successor model will have to
A. You want to hire the best talent, and you want to expose that talent to all sources of information. In addition, as discussed before, you want to give strict and non-interpretable goals to that work- force. We encourage our people to have close relationships with our partners—for instance, companies such as Bosch and Continental—to have enough time to continuously drive all of our products, and to benchmark our cars and processes against those of our competitors. Product is king. We make it a point of personal honor to strive for the best solutions and not pursue suboptimal concepts.
Q. and balanced vehicle portfolio for Volk- swagen to manage against? How do you identify and distinguish the diverse types of cars that you want to produce, while preserving choice and allowing an appro- priate degree of redundancy between cars?
A. A balanced portfolio for VW means that we need core models that create
Army AL&T Magazine
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