Audi names former BMW exec as head of procurement

Audi has named Renate Vachenaur, a former BMW executive who has been at the Volkswagen Group subsidiary  since 2021, as head of procurement. 

The position was held by Dirk Grosse-Loheide, who was promoted to head of procurement at VW Group and VW Group on Jan. 1 in a reorganization of the purchasing department at Europe’s largest automaker.

At the time, VW Group said Grosse-Loheide would remain as head of Audi procurement on a temporary basis.

Those changes, announced in December, came as VW was suffering from delivery bottlenecks and production stops because of shortages of semiconductors and other components. 

VW brand chief Thomas Schaefer said in December that the company’s Wolfsburg plant is building well under 400,000 cars a year, less than half its capacity, because of “flat-out chaos” in the supply chain.

In her new position Vachenauer will serve on Audi’s management board, reporting to CEO Markus Duesmann.

Audi Supervisory Board Chairman Manfred Döss said in the release that Vachenaur’s “experience with digital ecosystems makes her the ideal candidate to meet today’s challenges and advance our transformation into a software-driven mobility provider.”

Vachenaur starts in her new position on April 1. 

Vachenaur holds a doctorate in engineering with a specialization in electric drives from the Technical University of Munich.

She began her career at BMW in 1999, where she worked in electronics and electronic driving dynamics development. In 2006 she moved to Michigan, where she worked on a collaborative project with DaimlerChrysler and GM on driving dynamics.

She returned to Germany in 2009 and held management positions in driver assistance systems, electronic control units and transmission/drive train development, among other areas. 

Vachenaur moved to Audi in April 2021 as vice president development interior, interaction/data management.