Antonio Cobo: “I have worked long and hard and received an unequalled return”

Antonio Cobo,  Former Managing Director of GM/Opel España, conveys passion and gratitude after a long and brilliant professional career, in which the knowledge acquired is currently being extended in new projects. Projects in which, as always, he highlights the value of people.

AutoRevista.- How did your interest and vocation for the automotive world come about?

Antonio Cobo.-  I studied in Granada, from school, to high school and then to university, combining my studies with my father's work in the summer. He was dedicated to the distribution of frozen products, he was a pioneer in this activity in Spain in the 1960s. I worked in the warehouse, with the lorries and the staff who worked at home, and from me I learned all the values that have been fundamental in my professional life since then. As for my passion for cars, in our case lorries, I remember that I changed the bearing of an AVIA lorry by myself when I was only 12 years old. However, I ended up breaking it and was reprimanded by my father for being ‘foolish and daring’. At the age of 13 or 14, he taught me to drive trucks on the dirt tracks of the then deserted beaches from Balerma to Ejido when we distributed frozen products in the province of Almería.

I learned the value of effort to support the family and the business and how important it is in times of difficulty, the importance of dreams. My father was a dreamer who ‘overwhelmed’ us with his projects. He also passed on to me the importance of being well trained, to convince with arguments and to fight to be the best, which became a constant throughout my life, competitiveness.

I began to study Physics and, once again, thanks to my father, a regular reader of the ‘salmon’ pages of El País and, as a result of some conversations based on the book ‘Las empresas multinacionales’, I sent, at the end of 1980, a job application to a new company that was setting up in our country, General Motors España. A few months later I had a job offer and a contract. In September 1981 I started my training period in the dynamic and functional test laboratories of Adam Opel AG at the Bochum plant in Germany and the laboratories of the Opel engineering and technical centre in Rüsselsheim.

At the end of 1980, I sent a job application to a new company that was setting up in our country, General Motors España. A few months later I had a job offer and a contract

AR.- What is your experience as an active witness of the evolution of the Figueruelas factory, linked to Opel, from GM to PSA and then Stellantis, with the critical moment of 2009?

A.C.- In the 1980s, Opel was undoubtedly the automotive company of Europe and therefore one of the best in the world. German engineering for all, Opel's motto, with products that thrilled and delighted all customers, the most technologically advanced, the best in quality and reliability and affordable to all, products that all social classes could afford. There was the Corsa, the Kadett, the Ascona, the Manta, the Omega, the Senator and more, unbeatable.

In the 1990s we began to face many challenges as a result of the ‘new’ globalisation, Opel was growing and was a key pillar in the global expansion structure of General Motors. In those years we built the plants in Eisenach (Germany) and Gliwice (Poland). Opel led GM's global expansion with GMIO (GM International Operations). All manufacturing systems implemented in the new GM plants, including Rosario (Argentina), Gravataí (Brazil), Gliwice (Poland) and Rayong (Thailand) were led from Europe. We developed the OPS (Opel Production System) based on the principles of Lean Manufacturing, which was the basis of the GM-GMS (General Motors Global Manufacturing System) that has remained the global manufacturing system of General Motors to this day. Subsequently the GMS, which was based on six principles - Safety, People, Quality, Responsiveness, Cost and Environmental Neutrality - was extended and implemented in all GM plants globally.

In the following decade, the 2000s and beyond, we experienced the true globalisation of the automotive industry, with a global market with Europeans, Americans and Asians, initially from Japan and later from Korea. In these years we also saw the expansion or entry of Western companies into China, some like Volkswagen or General Motors, with great success, coming to dominate the local Chinese market. In this decade GM was facing a serious financial problem to be able to pay the pensions of a workforce of hundreds of thousands of retired workers with the industrial operations at that time already much reduced. 

We estimated that the company had to spend between $2,000 and $2,500 per car produced to cover the capital needs of the pension plans and obligations incurred.

The global crisis of 2008 and the critical situation of the company finally led GM into insolvency on 1 June 2009, the famous ‘Chapter 11’ of GM, which also affected Chrysler in the US. GM's financial challenge during those years, the internal loss-making situation at Opel (former GM Europe), the attempt to find solutions that created tensions between the German and American parts of the company's management, the lack of strong support from some German trade union organisations and many more etcetera were, in my view, the factors for the difficult situation we experienced in those days. Although Opel was included in Chapter 11, we were never able to generate the necessary profits due to the size of the market, the amortisation costs for new vehicle developments, a manufacturing footprint with high impact in high cost countries (HCC), high material costs due to the lower volume of purchases from suppliers versus competitors and some inefficiencies in the strategy of implementing truly global and competitive architectures as well as a management focused on cost control that admitted, were among others some of the reasons for the difficulties that led General Motors to consider the sale of Opel to the PSA Group.

Although initially, for obvious reasons, not everyone at Opel was happy to move to another group, to another company, I have to admit that this solution, in 2017, was Opel's salvation. Without this operation, our plant in Zaragoza and many others in Europe would be in a very different situation or simply not at all.

I was struck by the huge difference between companies in the same business: developing, manufacturing and selling vehicles. However, many values and best practices have been leveraged in Opel and General Motors along with others from PSA and later Stellantis. Values shared between the two companies such as the focus on quality, efficiency, competitiveness, the customer as the centre of all decisions, but also differences such as the focus of each individual on cost control, the way of making people the best value of the company and recognising them, the agility in business decisions at different levels, the empowerment of people, employee satisfaction, etc., which have given me great value as a professional and as a person.

AR. -What do you consider to have been the key moments in your professional career?

A.C.- I had the privilege of receiving exhaustive training in the technical area when I started at Opel and GM to learn in detail about car components and their characteristics and physical properties, all very German. From my start as Head of Dynamic and Functional Testing and later on as Head of Supplier Quality, I had the opportunity to work closely with the Engineering Department in Rüsselsheim (Germany) and with the entire supplier base, which helped me in my further development.

I often say that on the road to success you have to consider three pillars: being better trained and worth more, having someone who trusts and pulls you, and being lucky, which is nothing more than being in the right place at the right time. I have met many professionals of great value and training who have not grown as much as they deserved to because of a lack of development of one of the other two pillars.

On the road to success, there are three pillars to consider: being better trained and worth more, having someone who trusts you and pulls you, and being lucky, being in the right place at the right time

I was lucky that my boss in Zaragoza, an American executive, trusted and ‘pulled’ me. The management of the Eisenach plant was my first international assignment and the start of many other growth opportunities that led me to executive positions in many parts of the world. Not only was I involved in the first automotive greenfield project in the eastern part of reunified Germany, but I must thank GM for giving me the opportunity to be a member of the team that conceived and implemented the Lansing Grand River plant in Michigan (USA), at that time the most modern automotive plant in the global industry where a new architecture for the new generations of Cadillac luxury vehicles was brought together. It was the first time that the new GMS Manufacturing system was implemented in the United States, in a completely new plant where we implemented all the best technological tools, the most efficient lay-outs, the most modern facilities and the most advanced management systems at the time. New vehicle, new plant, new manufacturing system, an opportunity that very few have in their professional life.

AR.- And again, back to Spain.

A.C.- My professional career continued at Opel's technical and vehicle development centre as a member of the development and launch teams for the Meriva, Corsa, Tigra and Agila models. I then moved into manufacturing management at the Rüsselsheim plant in Germany where I launched the new Opel Insignia - Car of the Year in 2009 - and which helped me to subsequently lead Opel and General Motors operations in Spain as the company's top executive.

Three were my objectives and obsessions as General Manager of GM and Opel Spain: to be a global benchmark in GM and number one in Quality, to be the most competitive in costs and to do it with the best and most committed team

Three were my objectives and obsessions as General Manager of GM and Opel Spain: to be a global benchmark in GM and number one in Quality, to be the most cost-competitive and to do so with the best and most committed team. The result: ‘done, done, done’ reference and best quality indexes in GM at a global level in first quality and customer complaints, reduction of more than 50% of the manufacturing cost, becoming a global benchmark in Manufacturing Cost in GM and with the most efficient and proud team I have met in all my professional experience, production workers, logistics, maintenance, middle management, engineers, department and area managers, management team and trade unions and trade union leaders. All together, to have the best plant in the world.

This spirit at the Zaragoza plant was evident to me from a distance in my last assignment within PSA/Stellantis as Executive Vice President of Opel Manufacturing and Supply Chain and Cluster Head of the Sedan segment and all PSA/Stellantis plants that manufactured them in the UK, France, Germany and Poland. I appreciate and acknowledge, today more than ever, the privilege of having worked with General Motors, Opel, Groupe PSA and Stellantis and the opportunities for growth that all of them have given me. I have worked long and hard in the best way I knew how, yes, but the return and generosity of all my companies has also been second to none.

AR.- Although retired from the front line, you are still involved in the sector.

A.C.- My sister tells me that I have the ‘disease’ of hyperactivity like our father had. Well, I don't know if that's true, but I need to be active. Since my retirement, I don't miss the daily pressure, the stress for aggressive target achievement, the daily, weekly reports... but I do miss my people on the shop floor and the daily interaction in continuous improvement and problem solving with them. I miss and am in love with working in and with teams.

I try to compensate for this and I believe that I can now continue to contribute and help in an altruistic way, a way that at least in my case is rewarding and satisfying. I am currently supporting and putting my experience at the disposal of the Government of Aragon in matters such as industrials, strategic investments or in the Motorland Council. I have collaborated with the Ibercaja Foundation on the Mobility City project and continue to serve on their advisory committee to help develop the Mobility City Museum and activities, a world reference with Zaragoza as the centre of the Mobility of the Future.

I am also collaborating with CEOE Aragón as president of the Think-Tank Aragón, which is a strategic body for reflection, generation of ideas and proposal of innovative solutions for the sustainable growth and productivity of the economy and companies in the community of Aragón because we believe this is the best way to improve the welfare and prosperity of society as a whole.

We regularly offer society the most relevant competitiveness factors that have the greatest impact on us and we propose measures that, if adopted by society as a whole, would improve our competitive position and economic and social development.

We have just presented to the press and society as a whole our White-Paper No. 2 in which we propose a catalogue of measures in the areas of Human Capital, Improvement and Image of Aragon and Innovation and Technology. In White-Paper No. 1, which we unveiled in the first part of the year, we identified and prioritised the 11 challenges or competitive disadvantages that most impact our economy today.

Lea esta entrevista en castellano

Interview published in AutoRevista