The Renault-Nissan Alliance has announced five deputy and senior vice-president appointments to support its Manufacturing, Production Engineering and Supply Chain Management division from April 1st.
The division handles global industrial strategy across the group’s brands, including sourcing, production process engineering, production control and supply chain management, and has been headed by John Martin since October 2017, who moved from his previous role at Nissan North America.
Jose Vicente de Los Mozos (pictured), has been appointed deputy Alliance executive vice-president, manufacturing and supply chain management operations 1. He moves from his role as executive vice-president of manufacturing and supply chain at Renault and has been with the company for 40 years, joining Renault in 1978 as an engineering apprentice.
Hideyuki Sakamoto has similarly been made deputy Alliance executive vice-president, manufacturing and supply chain management operations 2.
The operations designation refers to Renault’s internal regional organisation.
Sakamoto joined Nissan in 1980 for 15 years before moving to Calsonic. He joined Renault in 2003 and moved to work for the company in Brazil before moving onto the Nissan Technical Center in North America. He was, until recently, executive vice-president of product engineering at Nissan.
Meanwhile, Mark Sutcliffe has moved to become Alliance senior vice-president of supply chain management and industrial strategy. Sutcliffe has been global vice-president of supply chain management at the Alliance for the last four years and joined the company in 2013 from Rolls-Royce.
The carmaker has also announced that Jun Seki will be Alliance senior vice-president of production engineering. Seki joined Nissan back in 1986 working his way to senior vice-president of the carmaker in 2014 as well as being the president of Dongfeng Motor and chairman of the Management Committee for China.
Finally, Colin Lawther has moved to become Alliance regional senior vice-president, MFG Transition TQM, PMO, TdC (covering quality and project management).
Lawther moves from his role as senior vice-president for manufacturing, purchasing and supply chain management. He joined Nissan in 1985 evaluating and localising European materials and components for the company. He has also served as vice-president of production engineering and quality engineering for Nissan Europe. In March 2013, Lawther was appointed vice-president for Monozukuri in Nissan's Africa, Middle East and India region.
The moves in the Manufacturing, Production Engineering and Supply Chain Management division are part of wider changes across the management of the company and the establishment of new Alliance teams as part of the Alliance 2022 mid-term plan.
“We are announcing the Alliance teams who will implement the next stage of convergence,” said Carlos Ghosn, chairman and CEO of the group. “Through incremental revenues, cost savings and cost-avoidance measures they will contribute to double annual synergies to more than €10 billion ($12.3 billion) by the end of Alliance 2022, up from €5 billion in 2016.”
