Marc Menden to lead global supply chain at GM; David Leich to retire
David Leich, executive director of global supply chain at General Motors, is retiring after a 37-year career with the company and period of rising influence and importance for supply chain management. He will be succeeded by Marc Menden, currently executive director of purchasing programme management, effective January 1, 2026.
Marc Menden will lead GM’s global supply chain, which includes strategic production planning and production control across GM plants, helping to set vehicle programme and powertrain schedules, supplier capacity and inventory levels.
The functions under his responsibility include coordination and scheduling across assembly and plant logistics, propulsion, stamping and components, demand and supply planning, aftersales supplier management and vehicle launch execution, along with teams focused on supply chain technology and innovation. Menden will continue to report to Shilpan Amin, chief procurement and supply chain officer for GM’s Global Purchasing and Supply Chain (GPSC) organisation, who was appointed to his role in April 2025.
The importance of the global supply chain organisation has been magnified in recent years under the leadership of David Leich, who retires in January after leading the supply chain organisation for six years. In this time, GM and the wider automotive industry have navigated unprecedented disruption, from the Covid-19 pandemic and semiconductor shortages to geopolitical instability, significant changes in electric vehicle demand and policy, as well as increasing complexity across the supply chain.
GM’s supply chain organisation is an important counterpart and tandem to its logistics and container organisation, led by Marcio Lucon since 2024. Working together, the two organisations are spearheading GM objectives to increase end-to-end supply chain visibility and to increase resilience as the carmaker adapts its manufacturing and supplier footprint, including as part of GM’s multi-billion dollar investment in US production and industrialisation.
David Leich: A legacy of resilience and innovation
David Leich began his career at GM in 1989 as a buyer in Flint, Michigan, and went on to hold a variety of supply chain and production roles that put him at the forefront of GM’s efforts to build a more resilient, intelligent and predictive supply chain. Leich has led many new model launches, and held leadership roles across several GM manufacturing plants, in pre-production operations, launch readiness and risk management, as well as demand and supply planning, before he took on the top supply chain job in December 2019.
During this period, the supply chain organisation has championed the use of advanced technology, including AI and predictive analytics, to improve visibility and proactively mitigate risk across the supply chain. For example, under Leich’s leadership, GM has invested in supply chain mapping and real-time event monitoring to gain a deeper understanding of its multi-tiered supplier network.
A key tool developed in this effort has been a supplier health dashboard, a machine learning-powered platform that provides real-time risk ratings for every supplier based on multiple factors, including operational, inventory, financial and geopolitical, which Leich first presented at the 2024 Automotive Logistics & Supply Chain conference in Detroit. It is an approach which helps GM to “proactively engage with the highest-risk suppliers to ensure they can put actions in place to mitigate issues before something becomes a bigger issue,” Leich told Automotive Logistics.
Over the past year, Leich revealed that the supply chain organisation has invested further in sub-tier supplier mapping; tier-1 suppliers are now required to provide further information on their suppliers, for example. Leich and his team have also worked with IT and data teams to further centralise and connect supply chain information to support more proactive risk management, notably through AI and machine learning.
“I’m deeply grateful to have served alongside GM’s world class supply chain team,” Leich told Automotive Logistics. “Their ingenuity and resilience through unprecedented disruptions made our operations stronger. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and built together and look forward to cheering them on from the sidelines.”
Marc Menden: Cross-functional leadership
Marc Menden will take over the top role in supply chain with significant procurement and cross-functional experience across multiple companies and industries. Menden joined GM in 2016 as vice-president of GPSC for South America, where he was responsible for all purchasing, supply chain and logistics activities in the region, which is one of the most complex for the supply chain in terms of diverse regulatory environments, suppliers and shipping challenges.
Other recent executives who have held the top GPSC position in South America have also gone on to hold prominent positions in global logistics and supply chain, including Marcio Lucon and one of his predecessors, Edgard Pezzo.
In 2020, Menden took over as executive director of strategy planning and operations for global purchasing and supply chain, where he was responsible for global raw materials strategy, governance, value chain engineering, and sustainability. In his current role since 2022 in purchasing programme management, Menden and his organisation are responsible procurement across the entire programme of vehicle model, combining relevant component, modules and services.
Menden holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management and a Bachelor of Science in Business Management with an emphasis in finance from Brigham Young University. He currently is the Chair and a member of the Global Supply Chain Advisory Board at BYU's Marriott School of Business since 2012.
“I am honoured at the opportunity to lead GM’s global supply chain team and have been mentored and inspired working with Dave over the years. Successful and integrated supply chains are grounded on supplier partnerships and executed with top talent and leading tools,” said Menden. “The industry-leading work the team does has never been more important as we look to increase resiliency and continue to deliver quality vehicles for customers.”
