Job 1 Reinvent Ford

[g48150]

1) It would seem to me, on a schematic level (as opposed to actually designing the individual components in the car), that there should be a small enough number of people involved in setting the overall parameters of any given car, that a policy change could be implemented, with little difficulty, that would result in a 'customer desire' focused chain of events.

 

Okay, given that there are roughly 15 modules where I work, each one gets its own PMT. A PMT has roughly 7 people on it, and doing multiplication you get 105 people that can change the direction of the MODULES. Now for PATs, which are a little bit different, there are different size teams for different "systems", chassis, body, safety, etc. Say this number is close to 85, grand total, 190 people. Now take into account that there are, on average 3 D & R engineers on each PAT or PMT, and you get, voila, 570. Now, that's just the people that do the work, a mix of LL6s and GSRs. Throw roughly two levels (for a 4 level project) of management in there and you get 1140 people, including management that make a "small enough number of people involved" look like a small army, with INCREDIBLE difficulty. This is only for one vehicle program, not the whole of Ford.

When I built tanks, the ENTIRE ORGANIZATION from the President down to me was 1200 people, and we built TANKS, not cars!!! This is how the "chimneys" got built in the first place, 1140 on average is alot of mouths to feed...

 

2) I don't see anything particularly inventive about having suppliers on the line, when at a place like Chicago, they're to all intents and purposes, working on feeder lines that lead into the main assembly line. This seems like nothing but an incremental step in a process that's been going on for years.

 

Well, that's not the only thing they're doing, on the Clipsheet this morning, I found an article by Tom Lasorda from DCX saying roughly that the supplier will be putting more parts on the car, at the assembly plant line level.

 

3) At what level does GPDS 'scrap and start over' kick in? component? system? entire car? If you find that The side impact beam prevents a certain design detail on the door's surface, what happens? What happens if the fasteners for the door panel conflict, in location, with the inner surface of the door?

 

GPDS? There are no feedback loops, Rich, its all manual "re-work". To meet "packaging" guidlines, a D&R engineer needs to make his module "fit" in the overall packaging scheme. On paper, this takes one step, but in reality, well, we know how fickle "packaging" can become...

[RichardJensen]

Okay, given that there are roughly 15 modules where I work, each one gets its own PMT. A PMT has roughly 7 people on it, and doing multiplication you get 105 people that can change the direction of the MODULES. Now for PATs, which are a little bit different, there are different size teams for different "systems", chassis, body, safety, etc. Say this number is close to 85, grand total, 190 people. Now take into account that there are, on average 3 D & R engineers on each PAT or PMT, and you get, voila, 570. Now, that's just the people that do the work, a mix of LL6s and GSRs. Throw roughly two levels (for a 4 level project) of management in there and you get 1140 people, including management that make a "small enough number of people involved" look like a small army, with INCREDIBLE difficulty. This is only for one vehicle program, not the whole of Ford.

When I built tanks, the ENTIRE ORGANIZATION from the President down to me was 1200 people, and we built TANKS, not cars!!! This is how the "chimneys" got built in the first place, 1140 on average is alot of mouths to feed...

So we've basically got a hierarchy that goes something like this:

 

Ford > Fields > Stevens > Kuzak > Team "x" leader (Hau Thai Tang, with the Mustang, for instance) > PMT & PAT managers.

 

One would imagine that the ability of Fields to push different practices to PMTs and PATs is not overly compromised, especially given the working relationship between Fields, Stevens, and Kuzak. Kuzak also has a doctorate in Systems Engineering. The overall structure seems to be in place for implementing a more customer centric approach. In regards to the number of engineers and managers required, I am inclined to think that car construction is a trifle more complicated than tank construction (that's just me, I guess--given the scads of environmental regs, the hundreds of thousands of consumers, the need to provide refinement, performance, economy, and value--I don't mean to say the government is not picky or demanding, just that they're not as picky and demanding as a typical American consumer).

 

Anyway, the structure is in place. I would consider the PMTs and PATs to be small enough units to be redirected, with a change in policy from the top down. Reducing the number of PMTs and PATs eliminates a certain amount of administrative overhead, and this may be a way to make the vehicle program more responsive. However, I maintain that a more customer-centric approach can be imposed fairly easily from the top down, simply by changing what each manager is required to provide to his manager, at the beginning and throughout the project. Once a system is in place policy-wise, and activity wise, and once it's proven effective, then steps should be taken to automate it.

 

However, the problem with automating certain tasks is that you have a tendency to make permanent a methodology that should be refined in an ongoing process (although you don't want to change too often--frequent change kills productivity, even if it actually makes the process more efficient).