You first started at Audi in 1997 as a student employee. You then held various positions both for the Four Rings and the Volkswagen Group and have been back in Ingolstadt since February as a Member of the Board of Management. What does the Audi brand mean to you?
It feels a little like returning home after being away on an eventful journey. Although geographically speaking it was “only” Wolfsburg and Győr in Hungary, I learned a great deal and gained important experience. I’m really pleased to be back in Ingolstadt now. This is where I started out as a student employee when I was 27. For me, Audi is the most exciting brand in the Volkswagen Group, because of its highly diverse product portfolio among other reasons.
In 2030, Audi wants to sell three million vehicles per year. At the same time, combustion-engine vehicles will gradually be replaced by electric models. What do these changes mean for Production and Logistics?
Setting this goal sends out a really strong message – both internally and externally. The Four Rings have a clearly defined plan for the future. In view of market forecasts, our attractive product portfolio and our flexible and highly capable team, it’s certainly feasible. The transformation is a long road, but we have already taken important steps. The Brussels plant has already been exclusively producing electric cars since 2018, we recently produced the 250,000th electric motor in Győr and in Ingolstadt we are gearing up for the Audi Q6 e-tron, including our own battery assembly.
Audi has been committed to enhancing environmental protection for years, primarily at its plants. Which additional measures are planned in this regard in 2022?
We already embarked upon an ambitious environmental program in Production and Logistics a couple of years ago with Mission:Zero. A central goal of this program is to operate our production sites with a net carbon-neutral footprint by 2025 at the latest. This has already been achieved for Audi Brussels and Audi Hungaria, as well as for the production of the Audi e-tron GT at the Böllinger Höfe production facility in Neckarsulm. But it is also quite clear that decarbonization is not the sole focus. The efficient handling of resources, economical water usage and protection of biodiversity are of at least equal importance. I would like to concentrate on this in particular and am delighted that so much groundwork has already been done in this area that we can now draw on.
At Audi Brussels, for instance, our plan is to cease using high-quality drinking water in the future to cover our process water requirements for production. Instead, we will use reprocessed wastewater from the neighboring municipal sewage plant into which our wastewater also flows. This has the potential to reduce the site’s drinking-water consumption by about 80 percent. Audi México has led the way in this regard, by the way, and has already been producing vehicles without any wastewater since 2019. In addition, we will present our own biodiversity index in 2022, which describes the animal and plant biodiversity at our production sites.
You know Audi from many different perspectives. How helpful is that for your new responsibilities?
This knowledge is especially helpful now on my return. I have good connections and kept in close contact with some of my Audi colleagues throughout the entire time. At the same time, I benefit enormously from my experiences over the past years, especially in terms of steering the entire Group-wide production network. Both collectively form the basis for one of my most important tasks: striking the right balance between making maximum use of Group synergies and protecting the specific Audi DNA in relation to our products.
Digitalization is opening up many new possibilities. How do you intend to further connect production at Audi?
Digitalization plays a key role for production in the future. Audi is already very well positioned in this regard. For example, we have a dedicated team, the Audi Production Lab, which tests innovative production technologies under real conditions. Audi is very open in general to new digital solutions. This openness also means collaborating intensively with external partners. One example of this is the Automotive Initiative 2025 at the Neckarsulm site, in the context of which we are developing a large network of expertise in digital production. During my time at Volkswagen, I dealt intensively with digital systems and helped to launch the Industrial Cloud. Some applications developed by Audi are already available on this platform for all plants in the Volkswagen Group. This creates excellent synergies and makes us faster and more flexible throughout the entire Group. We will now continue to follow this path systematically.