Antonio Cobo

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Antonio J. Cobo is Managing Director GM Spain and Plant Manager Zaragoza Plant
Antonio Cobo has spent his professional career in General Motors, in positions of different responsibility in various areas of the organization and in different countries, including Germany and the United States. Antonio Cobo was appointed Managing Director and Plant Manager of General Motors España in 2010.  Since then, he leads the company’s overall activities in Spain.
He joined General Motors España in 1981 and during a year and a half he received training in Adam Opel AG (Germany) in the Bochum Plant as well as in the Technical Development Center in Rüsselsheim. Since then and until 1994, he held several positions in the Quality area. In 1994, he was transferred to Germany, where he joined the team of the new Eisenach Plant as Quality Operations Manager. From 1996 to 1999 he served as Manager in the Quality Operations and Product Engineering areas in the Zaragoza Plant. In 1999 he moved to Lansing (Michigan, U.S.A.) as a member of the project team that built and implemented the new LGR (Lansing Grand River) Plant, where he took over the position of Quality Director. This plant, at that time the world’s most modern in the automotive industry, was created as GM’s manufacturing system model in North America and dedicated to producing the new Cadillac luxury model generation.
In 2002 he returned to Europe to the International Technical Development Center and Product Engineering in Rüsselsheim (Germany), where he held the position of Quality Director for Small Vehicle Development. From that time until 2005, Antonio was part of the Meriva, current Corsa, Tigra and new Agila development teams. In 2005 he returned to the Opel Plant in Figueruelas (Zaragoza) as Quality Director.
From 2007 until 2010, Antonio was Assistant Plant Manager and Manufacturing Director at Opel in Rüsselsheim (Germany) where the new Opel Insignia was launched and is currently manufactured.
Antonio, during his career in General Motors, has contributed to projects with other companies such as Suzuki in Japan, Autovaz in Russia and Heuliez in France.
Antonio Cobo has been rewarded with the 2011 Quality Leader Award in Spain and 2011 European Quality Leader by the AEC (Spanish Quality Association) and the EOQ (European Organization for Quality) and has received the 2012 ADEA (Association of Aragón Entrepreneurs) Award to the Multinational Company Executive.
Antonio holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics and a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Granada. He held a research job on implementation of two variable functions in ternary logic with CMOS technology.