Speaking to UK newspaper Financial Times, Ms. Kux, who, it was recently announced, will be leaving the company next year when her contract expires, defended her legacy and said the Siemens would still deliver on the promised savings.
The goal of €3bn in savings in its supply chain was announced last month as Siemens revealed plans to close a profitability gap with competitors.
“The target is only possible because of what I have set up in the last four years … I’m very confident, I know exactly what can be done… I can tell you that the €3bn can be delivered. We are set up to achieve that,” she said in an interview with the paper.
Under her leadership Siemens achieved “upper single-digit” billions of euro in supply chain savings and raised the proportion of bundled purchasing from less than 30% in 2008 to about 55% in fiscal 2012.
Ms Kux told the paper she had not sought a renewal of her contract because she had achieved her goals and out of a desire to focus more on supervisory board roles in the future.
Her departure triggered speculation that she had encountered opposition among Siemens’ managers to her role. Ms Kux acknowledged that she was “not everybody’s darling” but insisted that she has worked well with Siemens’ powerful sector chiefs.
While the synergies in the supply chain delivered those significant savings during Kux’s tenure, the German engineering conglomerate now plans to modify its supply chain strategy by focusing more during the manufacturing and research process on “design to cost”, to ensure its products are competitive in the market. This, the company says, will entail greater involvement of Siemens’ business unit heads in purchasing.
Ms Kux rejected the suggestion that Siemens’ cost-cutting plan could mean a partial reversal of her centralised purchasing legacy, which she began implementing following her appointment in 2008.
“Why should we reverse what we’ve done?… This [centralised] network has been established and it will remain… We want to maintain these bundling, synergy effects. That’s absolutely required, it would be wrong to move that back,” she told the FT.
