Tesla poaches top manufacturing executive from Bosch

Tesla has poached a top manufacturing executive from Bosch, Dr. Michael Schmitt, who has over 25 years of experience at the German manufacturing giant.

Last year, Tesla brought Tom Zhu, the executive in charge of Tesla’s operations in China, to the US to oversee all manufacturing and sale operations in North America.

The automaker hopes to replicate the impressive success it has been enjoying at Gigafactory Shanghai in all its North American operations.

Under Zhu’s leadership, Tesla has already been having some success with Gigafactory Texas achieving production of 5,000 Model Y vehicles per week, and the automaker managed to maintain industry-leading gross margins despite significant price drops throughout the year.

But he can’t do it alone, and Tesla has been looking to add more manufacturing leadership in North America.

Yesterday, Electrek exclusively reported that Tesla hired Eli Lilly manufacturing executive Michael Hildebrand to lead the Gigafactory Nevada expansion.

Now we can report that Tesla has hired Dr. Michael Schmitt from Bosch.

We had heard from sources familiar with the matter that Schmitt was brought to cover a broad role in Tesla’s NA manufacturing operations, and now the executive has made it official by updating his LinkedIn last week to “Director Operations Gigafactory” at Tesla.

Schmitt is coming to Tesla from Bosch, where he had a more than 25-year career in engineering and manufacturing. The doctor in physics led several factories in Germany, China, and Mexico.

The German native spent five years leading Bosch’s automotive parts manufacturing in Mexico, which should be useful for Tesla’s Gigafactory Mexico project.

Most recently, Schmitt was Bosch’s chief operating officer and senior vice president North America in charge of “operations and R&D for Factory Automation and Hydraulics in Canada, USA, and Mexico.”

Schmitt has started working at Tesla out of Austin over the last few weeks.

He joins Tesla as the automaker is trying to execute an ambitious plan to ramp up production 10x from 2 million vehicles to 20 million vehicles per year by the end of the decade.