He will therefore replace the position previously occupied by Wilfried Porth, who will take over from Günther Fleig as Member of the Board of Management for Human Resources and Labor Relations Director.
“I am delighted that Wolfgang Bernhard is back on board at Daimler. I have valued his knowledge and experience since the time we spent together in the United States, and I’m glad we can continue our excellent collaboration.” said Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management at Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars. After taking hold of his new position, Bernhard will report directly to Zetsche, as did Wilfred Porth before him.
Bernhard's history with the Daimler Group and its predecessor companies goes back to 1990, when he worked as management consultant for Mercedes-Benz. He actually joined the company in 1992 as a Project Manager for the reduction of material costs and productivity increases at Mercedes-Benz assembly plants.
Coincidentally or not, that period was also the start of Mercedes-Benz's downwards direction in terms of quality, but upwards in terms of models volume. Another (probably) coincidental fact is that Bernhard was also responsible for costs, quality and oversaw product development within the turnaround of the Chrysler Group, which we now know that it didn't quite go too well.
With an overall worldwide volume of sales of around 288,000 vehicles each year, the Mercedes-Benz Vans unit might not be such a hard job for the young manager. So, we aren't very startled about this news, but we sincerely hope it wasn't a bad decision on Zetsche's part.
Google News