"We cannot allow any supplier to be left behind"

Miguel Ángel Royo says that the COVID-19 pandemic has had “a drastic impact. On the one hand, because we are no longer going to manufacture the number of cars we had planned, and that affects us directly in the income statements, both for OEMs and suppliers. On the other hand, because our suppliers have been stopped for many weeks without billing customers, some have serious financing problems and we cannot let our supplier structure fall. We cannot allow any supplier to be left behind".

Regarding possible relocations of suppliers, Royo considers that “it is still too early to discuss the medium- or long-term strategy, since it has affected Chinese suppliers as much as it has German, Italian and Spanish suppliers. It was not a specific country or region. Right now we are 100% involved in getting ahead of this situation with our suppliers”.

“Right now we are 100% involved in getting ahead of this situation with our suppliers”

The Volkswagen Navarra executive points out that “we are working with all suppliers side by side, analysing stocks, coverage, urgent transport, etc. Every day we hold video conferences with critical suppliers. Regarding sanitary protocols, before resuming production we summoned all the regional suppliers in Volkswagen Navarra in several sessions and explained the sanitary measures, agreed with the Government of Navarra, that we were going to implement in our factory because for us the protection of workers was a priority”.

Regarding supply management, Miguel Ángel Royo states that “the monitoring and visibility of the supply chain that we have is precisely what has helped us not to stop the factory due to a lack of parts supply. We must continue to improve the entire supply chain through Industry 3.0, which has given us such good results.

“The monitoring and visibility of the supply chain that we have is precisely what has helped us not to stop the factory due to a lack of parts supply"

Regarding the measures focused on greater risk control and containment, the manager states that “logically, the large reduction in production has led us all to implement cost-saving and cost-containment measures. We have determined four working areas, and there is a permanent workshop for each of these groups, in order to reduce costs to guarantee our future. We know that our suppliers are in the same line of optimisations.

Regarding rethinking the management model, Miguel Ángel Royo says that “right now we are only working on how to get out of the day to day. We will see later if there is a new management model or if we maintain the current one with the experiences gained. We have learned that communication with the supplier and the control of the supply chain that we have is good and robust and that, therefore, we must continue to improve in this direction through new technologies”.

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Read the complete information in the next issue of AutoRevista nª 2.350.