Article at a glance:

How IT can drive business process reorganization: An interview with the CIO of Volkswagen

• As chief information officer of Volkswagen's automotive group, Klaus-Hardy Mühleck has championed the CIO's role as the arbiter of business process and enablement.
• The increasing complexity of automobiles—and the manufacturing process that creates them—deems IT a necessary leader of all the business' processes, from engineering and design through manufacture, distribution, sales, and service.
• Mühleck has overseen the sale of VW's IT subsidiary, gedas, to a third-party, in line with their efforts to focus internal IT on innovation and business enablement. He has also introduced the concept of process integration officers who are driving the end-to-end redesign of processes across business units and regions.

This interview discusses ideas that are covered in depth in a related article, "Splitting demand from supply in IT."