Sean Liang is the new director of Global Purchasing and Supply Chain for GM China replacing Michael Filazzola, who has moved to a new position as executive director of GPSC for GM Holden in Australia, the position previously occupied by Liang.
Liang will be responsible for the Purchasing organisation’s business operations including supplier quality, logistics, supply chain operations and parts purchasing, including Chinese export suppliers. He will be based in Pudong, Shanghai.
Filazzola, who has been with GM for 12 years, had been in the position since January 2009, having previously served as GM Asia Pacific Director for Interior Commodity.
Bill Mikkelsen is replacing Walter Lowe as Ford’s Manager of North American Vehicle Logistics following Lowe’s decision to retire at the beginning of October.
In his new role Mikkelsen, who has been working alongside Lowe, will take over responsibility for all elements of finished vehicle distribution from each of Ford’s North America vehicle assembly facilities to a dealer network of more than 4,000.
Lowe, who was in the role for more than five years, is a career supply chain/material management professional with 30 years of experience in the aerospace and automotive manufacturing sectors.
He is also chairman of the Automotive Industry Logistics Steering Committee and member of the Board of Directors at the Automotive Industry Action Group.
Ceva Logistics has appointed Mate Szombathelyi as country manager of Hungary. In his new role Szombathelyi will be responsible for growing Ceva’s business and operational capability across both Freight Management and Contract Logistics operations in Hungary. He reports to Piotr Zborowski, Ceva’s senior vice president, Eastern Europe.
Szombathelyi has eight years experience in the logistics industry and joined Ceva in 2006 as sales manager in Hungary before being promoted to regional sales manager for Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania in 2008.
Prior to joining Ceva, Szombathelyi worked for DHL Global Forwarding as sales executive and tradelane manager for North America.
Philip Brown has moved from his position as director at NYK Logistics Europe to take up the role of UK managing director at supply chain provider SBS Worldwide.
Brown has around 20 years experience in the logistics and freight forwarding industry and has held senior executive positions within the Zeigler and Schenker organisations. He was also previously president and CEO of Geologistics SpA Italy.
SBS chairman, Steve Walker, said: “This completes our senior management appointments that will see our change from an A2B forwarder to a supply chain driven model, with Phil’s expertise allied with our consultative brand Virtualized Logistics leading the drive.
