Renault Hires New Engineering, China Ops Chiefs

PARIS – Renault looks outside its ranks for a new head of engineering to replace the retiring Odile Desforges, one of the highest-ranking women in the European auto industry.

Jean-Michel Billig, who resigned last month as chief engineer at the Eurocopter division of Airbus, will join the auto maker July 1 and report to Chief Operating Officer Carlos Tavares.

Billig joined Airbus in 1998 after three years in the European satellite business and, before that, with Schlumberger, a company that helps oil companies find and extract petroleum.

Billig is relatively young, a 1987 graduate of the Ecole Central de Paris, one of France’s top engineering colleges. He also studied at the Harvard Business School. An auto maker’s choice of an outsider for as vital role a role as chief engineer generally is a sign top management is looking for change.

Engineers at Renault’s Technical Center have gone through several demoralizing years, first with a string of suicides partly blamed on company pressure, and then the 2011 firings of three high-ranking engineers in the electric-vehicle program falsely blamed for selling secrets.

A second appointment marks another major change at Renault.

Executive Vice President Katsumi Nakamura, formerly with Nissan, on April 1 takes the newly created position of operations director in China. The appointment foreshadows Renault’s bid to become a manufacturer in the country with its alliance partner Nissan.

Nakamura now is director of operations for Asia and Africa. The China post is new, because for the moment there are no Renault operations there except for a small dealer network selling imported Renaults.

Gilles Normand, now in charge of Africa, the Middle East and India for Nissan, takes over Nakamura’s post for the Asia/Pacific region, while responsibility for Africa moves to the Euromed division, which already covers all of North Africa.

Another Nissan executive, Product Director Thomas Lane, takes the same position at Renault starting April 1. He replaces Beatrice Foucher, who is moving to an unspecified new job. Lane also will oversee Renault’s relationship with Daimler on joint products such as the future Twingo and Smart and shared engines.