Stellantis has officially reached across the street to Detroit rival General Motors to grab its latest “savior”. Starting February 23, Marcelo Conti will take the reins as the new head of Purchasing and Supplier Quality for North America. Conti is stepping into a role that is essentially the corporate equivalent of being a bomb squad technician, tasked with managing a supply chain that has recently been about as stable as a house of cards in a hurricane.
Conti isn’t exactly a rookie. With over 30 years of experience spanning the aerospace and automotive sectors, he knows his way around a complex engine. Most recently at GM, he was the go-to guy for interior, exterior, and thermal systems. Now, he’s moving to a company that has famously struggled with supplier relations, a friction point that analysts claim has been nibbling away at margins and causing a few headaches in the quality standards department.
He succeeds Marlo Vitous, a veteran who survived the 2009 Chrysler bankruptcy. A feat that surely earned her a permanent “I’ve seen it all” badge. Vitous isn’t leaving the building, though. She’s transitioning to a global role overseeing indirect material purchasing. Her new mission involves supporting the massive $13 billion investment plan for US production that Stellantis announced last October.
According to Stellantis spokesperson Jodi Tinson, these moves are all about “speed, discipline, and customer focus”. It sounds lovely on paper, but the reality is a brutal landscape of trade tariffs, semiconductor shortages, and the lingering PTSD of a global pandemic.
Conti’s job will be to turn these “recent improvements” into a sustainable strategy while ensuring that the North American market doesn’t fall behind in operational efficiency. Whether he can actually bring “quality” back to a supply chain that has been through the wringer remains to be seen, but at least he’s used to the high-pressure environment of aerospace.
