Ford Hires Transformation Officer to Improve Manufacturing Quality

[jpd80]

30 minutes ago, tarheels23 said:

I do not disagree, in fact, I agree completely.  It is up to Farley to embrace the Deming method and maybe the new hire will be required to do this but without Farley implicitly and Bill's complete support, none of our thoughts matter one whit.  

 

And just to reiterate I mean Deming and not any of the 6 sigmas BS which was only a perversion of Deming and a cash grab.

 

Thanks for your thoughtful discussion and for allowing me to relive some of my past memories.

Appreciate your input, it just kills me to see how Ford seems to continue the cycle of self harm over the decades,

they sure are slow learners……

[tarheels23]

11 hours ago, jpd80 said:

Appreciate your input, it just kills me to see how Ford seems to continue the cycle of self harm over the decades,

they sure are slow learners……

Yes, but the 'good' news is very few, based on my experience, the percentage of automakers following good QM is not very high that would get high marks and is limited to Asian and a few German companies.  The ignition switch issue at GM was an example of a breakdown in following their established quality system; QS9000.

[Joe771476]

On 3/23/2023 at 10:05 AM, akirby said:

Because the market environment never changes and all those 1903 employees are still here, right?  

It's called the dumbing down of America. These kids in school today can't be given failing grades because it will hurt their feelings! So we graduate them year after year into college and then engineering school and then they're going to design bridges that will collapse someday while your great grandkids are driving over them!

[iamweasel]

3 thoughts on this:

 

1)  This "hire" is basically Farley admitting he knows nothing about manufacturing / quality so he has to hire someone else to help fix it.  This is not a good look for Farley and he's losing respect from most people I know at Ford, but something had to be done and I get that.   This is not an ideal arrangement but better than the status-quo I guess.    This tells me he has no confidence in his product development / engineering directors - and I've heard there are some internal conflicts going on there - so this is going to be interesting.  

 

2)  This alone will not fix the fundemental problem which is component quality.  This is the main issue when it comes to overall product quality.  Like it or not, even with worldwide sourcing being more of the norm now, Ford still sources a majority of their components from North America which leads them to have a higher cost-basis than the exact same part Toyota may be using.  So that means you either have to take less margin or you cheapen-up the part to match the price Toyota is paying.  Either way you lose.  Only way to fix this is to buy the same part from the same supplier Toyota is using, but in most cases you can't because the asian suppliers still engage in keiretsu for the most part, and limit what they will sell to "outsiders" and when they do, they charge Ford more.  Given that, Ford woud need new & better low cost suppliers to emerge out of lower cost countries like Mexico, India, Turkey, etc, but that is easier said than done.

 

3)  As far as all the recalls/launch issues go, most of this is due to lack of discipline in the product development process.  (Again, back to the directors Farley doesn't seem to have a great relationship with.)  You need someone who will drive the teams to stay ON TIME with their process and not allow last minute changes or to allow a team to pass through a checkpoint when they truly haven't met all the criteria.  Maybe this new guy will help with that, but your PD Chief should be the one holding the team accountably for this.  The fact it's still not happening is a problem.  Too many of the old Ford managers are used to this and they need someone who is serious about it like Derrick Kuzak was.  Everything started to revert to old habits once Derrick left, and having CEO's like Hackett and Farley who have no experience in manufacturing doesn't help since they don't know how that side of the business works.

Edited March 26, 2023 by iamweasel

[tarheels23]

40 minutes ago, iamweasel said:

3 thoughts on this:

 

1)  This "hire" is basically Farley admitting he knows nothing about manufacturing / quality so he has to hire someone else to help fix it.  This is not a good look for Farley and he's losing respect from most people I know at Ford, but something had to be done and I get that.   This is not an ideal arrangement but better than the status-quo I guess.    This tells me he has no confidence in his product development / engineering directors - and I've heard there are some internal conflicts going on there - so this is going to be interesting.  

 

2)  This alone will not fix the fundemental problem which is component quality.  This is the main issue when it comes to overall product quality.  Like it or not, even with worldwide sourcing being more of the norm now, Ford still sources a majority of their components from North America which leads them to have a higher cost-basis than the exact same part Toyota may be using.  So that means you either have to take less margin or you cheapen-up the part to match the price Toyota is paying.  Either way you lose.  Only way to fix this is to buy the same part from the same supplier Toyota is using, but in most cases you can't because the asian suppliers still engage in keiretsu for the most part, and limit what they will sell to "outsiders" and when they do, they charge Ford more.  Given that, Ford woud need new & better low cost suppliers to emerge out of lower cost countries like Mexico, India, Turkey, etc, but that is easier said than done.

 

3)  As far as all the recalls/launch issues go, most of this is due to lack of discipline in the product development process.  (Again, back to the directors Farley doesn't seem to have a great relationship with.)  You need someone who will drive the teams to stay ON TIME with their process and not allow last minute changes or to allow a team to pass through a checkpoint when they truly haven't met all the criteria.  Maybe this new guy will help with that, but your PD Chief should be the one holding the team accountably for this.  The fact it's still not happening is a problem.  Too many of the old Ford managers are used to this and they need someone who is serious about it like Derrick Kuzak was.  Everything started to revert to old habits once Derrick left, and having CEO's like Hackett and Farley who have no experience in manufacturing doesn't help since they don't know how that side of the business works.

Thanks for your thoughts.  Out of The Crisis, that is the answer and Farley should be aware...

[jpd80]

3 hours ago, iamweasel said:

3 thoughts on this:

 

1)  This "hire" is basically Farley admitting he knows nothing about manufacturing / quality so he has to hire someone else to help fix it.  This is not a good look for Farley and he's losing respect from most people I know at Ford, but something had to be done and I get that.   This is not an ideal arrangement but better than the status-quo I guess.    This tells me he has no confidence in his product development / engineering directors - and I've heard there are some internal conflicts going on there - so this is going to be interesting.  

 

2)  This alone will not fix the fundemental problem which is component quality.  This is the main issue when it comes to overall product quality.  Like it or not, even with worldwide sourcing being more of the norm now, Ford still sources a majority of their components from North America which leads them to have a higher cost-basis than the exact same part Toyota may be using.  So that means you either have to take less margin or you cheapen-up the part to match the price Toyota is paying.  Either way you lose.  Only way to fix this is to buy the same part from the same supplier Toyota is using, but in most cases you can't because the asian suppliers still engage in keiretsu for the most part, and limit what they will sell to "outsiders" and when they do, they charge Ford more.  Given that, Ford woud need new & better low cost suppliers to emerge out of lower cost countries like Mexico, India, Turkey, etc, but that is easier said than done.

 

3)  As far as all the recalls/launch issues go, most of this is due to lack of discipline in the product development process.  (Again, back to the directors Farley doesn't seem to have a great relationship with.)  You need someone who will drive the teams to stay ON TIME with their process and not allow last minute changes or to allow a team to pass through a checkpoint when they truly haven't met all the criteria.  Maybe this new guy will help with that, but your PD Chief should be the one holding the team accountably for this.  The fact it's still not happening is a problem.  Too many of the old Ford managers are used to this and they need someone who is serious about it like Derrick Kuzak was.  Everything started to revert to old habits once Derrick left, and having CEO's like Hackett and Farley who have no experience in manufacturing doesn't help since they don't know how that side of the business works.

Excellent post, your three points encapsulates much of the issue at Ford. It’s almost like the Bill Ford moment when he realised that he needed someone else more expert to be CEO, this has to be Farley calling for a “Mulally” type moment where an outsider tells Ford how to fix the system.

 

 

[akirby]

I believe it’s partially bad parts from suppliers and from squeezing them too hard but there is also a fair share of bad engineering to blame along with poor risk management . Ford lost a ton of experienced engineers over the last decade.

[mackinaw]

5 hours ago, iamweasel said:

.....This "hire" is basically Farley admitting he knows nothing about manufacturing / quality so he has to hire someone else to help fix it..... 

 

Well, very few CEOs come from a manufacturing background.  Mulally was an engineer, Carlos Tavares (Stellantis) was in Product Development.  Takahiro Hachigo (Honda) was in Powertrains.  Mary Barra is the only CEO I'm aware of that has a manufacturing background.   

 

Farley is doing what they teach you in management school, hire a person to do a job, and let them do it.  No surprise here.

[akirby]

56 minutes ago, mackinaw said:

 

Well, very few CEOs come from a manufacturing background.  Mulally was an engineer, Carlos Tavares (Stellantis) was in Product Development.  Takahiro Hachigo (Honda) was in Powertrains.  Mary Barra is the only CEO I'm aware of that has a manufacturing background.   

 

Farley is doing what they teach you in management school, hire a person to do a job, and let them do it.  No surprise here.

And obviously he doesn’t trust any of the current executives.  And given the current state of things that’s probably a smart move.

 

Holding the Escape launch is a good sign that they are making some changes.

[iamweasel]

2 hours ago, mackinaw said:

 

Well, very few CEOs come from a manufacturing background.  Mulally was an engineer, Carlos Tavares (Stellantis) was in Product Development.  Takahiro Hachigo (Honda) was in Powertrains.  Mary Barra is the only CEO I'm aware of that has a manufacturing background.   

 

Farley is doing what they teach you in management school, hire a person to do a job, and let them do it.  No surprise here.

 

Engineering, Product Development and Powertrain are far closer to manufacturing than what Farley's background is, which is marketing.   Engineering, Product Deveopment and Manufacturing are all related - Marketing & Sales is a completely different animal.  

 

Farley's big mistakes here are:

1)  Not hiring a PD Chief who is competent

2)  Instead of firing and replacing that PD Chief who isn't doing the job, you hire a "Transformation Officer" to add more salary and more layers into the process

3)  Taking 2 years or whatever to recognize the problem

 

Either way, this just screams of a CEO who is out of his element and who's quickly losing confidence from employees and investors.   A CEO's job is to assemble a team around him who can do the job, especially in areas where he has no experience/know-how, but so far Farley has not been able to do that.

[paintguy]

4 hours ago, jpd80 said:

Excellent post, your three points encapsulates much of the issue at Ford. It’s almost like the Bill Ford moment when he realised that he needed someone else more expert to be CEO, this has to be Farley calling for a “Mulally” type moment where an outsider tells Ford how to fix the system.

 

 

Mulally reportedly applauded when someone reported a yellow or red status for a program at a meeting. It changed attitudes at the time. The corporate culture to always report green status is hard to shake. Hope Farley can make the change to culture.

[iamweasel]

Oh, and let me add one more thing.  The horrendus communication between Ford and their dealers/customers is also something the CEO needs to fix, and that is equally as much of a problem as the quality.  (I'm specifically referring to updates/notifications on orders and production.)  The dealers are in the dark on what's going on and you have customers who've been waiting for 1-2 years in some cases and Ford has done nothing along the way to fix that entire mess.  As someone who's been (and still is) involved with that part of the business now, I can tell you with 100% certainly that Ford is one of the worst, if not THE worst, OEM when it comes to this.  

 

The worst part of this is that is one part of the business Farley should be able to relate to given his background, but this is also a mess.  

[fuzzymoomoo]

2 hours ago, iamweasel said:

Oh, and let me add one more thing.  The horrendus communication between Ford and their dealers/customers is also something the CEO needs to fix, and that is equally as much of a problem as the quality.  (I'm specifically referring to updates/notifications on orders and production.)  The dealers are in the dark on what's going on and you have customers who've been waiting for 1-2 years in some cases and Ford has done nothing along the way to fix that entire mess.  As someone who's been (and still is) involved with that part of the business now, I can tell you with 100% certainly that Ford is one of the worst, if not THE worst, OEM when it comes to this.  

 

The worst part of this is that is one part of the business Farley should be able to relate to given his background, but this is also a mess.  

Farley has been pretty clear about his hatred of dealers without being blunt about it. IMO they’re actively trying to piss off the dealers as much as they can then in another few years offer buyouts and get rid of as many as they can so they can move to this agency model they’re rolling out in Europe. 

[mackinaw]

3 hours ago, iamweasel said:

...... A CEO's job is to assemble a team around him who can do the job, especially in areas where he has no experience/know-how, but so far Farley has not been able to do that.

 

Really?  These are the people that Ford (Farley) has poached from other companies recently to be part of his team: 

 

"Ford has hired a couple of former Apple employees in recent months, including Jennifer Waldo, its new chief people and employee experiences officer, and Doug Field to be its new chief advanced technology and embedded systems officer. Additionally, the automaker has also poached Rebecca Pagani from Amazon and made her its new chief privacy officer, Alan Clarke from Tesla for advanced EV development, Martin Sander from Volkswagen as its general manager, passenger vehicles, Ford of Europe, and chair of the management board of Ford-Werke GmbH, and Mike Amend from Lowe’s to be its chief digital and information officer."

[jpd80]

4 hours ago, paintguy said:

Mulally reportedly applauded when someone reported a yellow or red status for a program at a meeting. It changed attitudes at the time. The corporate culture to always report green status is hard to shake. Hope Farley can make the change to culture.

That was Fields looking for brownie points…..

[jpd80]

51 minutes ago, mackinaw said:

 

Really?  These are the people that Ford (Farley) has poached from other companies recently to be part of his team: 

 

"Ford has hired a couple of former Apple employees in recent months, including Jennifer Waldo, its new chief people and employee experiences officer, and Doug Field to be its new chief advanced technology and embedded systems officer. Additionally, the automaker has also poached Rebecca Pagani from Amazon and made her its new chief privacy officer, Alan Clarke from Tesla for advanced EV development, Martin Sander from Volkswagen as its general manager, passenger vehicles, Ford of Europe, and chair of the management board of Ford-Werke GmbH, and Mike Amend from Lowe’s to be its chief digital and information officer."

These people are mostly over on Mach E, look at their assignments and you’ll quickly see that none are involved in warranty problems, nor do they want to be 

Edited March 27, 2023 by jpd80

[iamweasel]

10 hours ago, mackinaw said:

 

Really?  These are the people that Ford (Farley) has poached from other companies recently to be part of his team: 

 

"Ford has hired a couple of former Apple employees in recent months, including Jennifer Waldo, its new chief people and employee experiences officer, and Doug Field to be its new chief advanced technology and embedded systems officer. Additionally, the automaker has also poached Rebecca Pagani from Amazon and made her its new chief privacy officer, Alan Clarke from Tesla for advanced EV development, Martin Sander from Volkswagen as its general manager, passenger vehicles, Ford of Europe, and chair of the management board of Ford-Werke GmbH, and Mike Amend from Lowe’s to be its chief digital and information officer."

 

Well half of those folks don't have anything to do with vehicle production/quality, and the other half are all brand new so until they show competency to do the job at Ford the jury is still out.  None of them have done anything to improve things......yet.  Hopefully they will have a positive impact as time goes on.

[Bob Rosadini]

1 hour ago, iamweasel said:

 

Well half of those folks don't have anything to do with vehicle production/quality, and the other half are all brand new so until they show competency to do the job at Ford the jury is still out.  None of them have done anything to improve things......yet.  Hopefully they will have a positive impact as time goes on.

And how many of these new people REPLACED someone in the org chart?  Seems like an exercise in buzz words to come up with word salad solutions for problems that should be handled by existing people-with effective leadership  of same...   I thought that we were in the age of flatter  org charts??

 

And I think we have to go back to the thing that made Farley such a priority recruiting "catch" for Mulally at Bill's direction.  He was the marketing genius that made Lexus a success.  But instead of concentrating on making improvements to the current business WITH the respective functional leaders, Farley is pursuing what we have been told is our immediate priority..the electrification of the auto industry.  And he certainly gets good press for that.

 

Unfortunately while that should be approached at a measured pace, it seems it has become Farley's  focus and he is in his creative comfort zone.

 

As to someones point about Mulally being an "engineer" as opposed to a manufacturing guy, I remember reading about  an "all hands" meeting of some sort when some brave soul in a Q and A session posed the question to  him about how comfortable he was dealing with an industry in which the product had like 12,000 parts?  His answer?

A 747 had like 5 million!

 

For the sake of my shares, I certainly hope Farley is the solution Bill Ford and the Board thinks he is.

[mackinaw]

2 hours ago, Bob Rosadini said:

And how many of these new people REPLACED someone in the org chart? ......

 

Seems to me you answered your own question.  Apparently the Ford bench is shallow, so Farley went outside the company and cherry-picked some highly regarded people.  None of these people had to quit their (well paying) jobs to join Ford, but they did.  

 

And we forget that Mulally came from Boeing, and had no experience at all in the auto industry, but is now regarded as being Ford's savior.  

 

For that matter, Elon Musk is not a rocket scientist, but Space-X seems to be very successful.

 

 

[Bob Rosadini]

51 minutes ago, mackinaw said:

 

Seems to me you answered your own question.  Apparently the Ford bench is shallow, so Farley went outside the company and cherry-picked some highly regarded people.  None of these people had to quit their (well paying) jobs to join Ford, but they did.  

 

And we forget that Mulally came from Boeing, and had no experience at all in the auto industry, but is now regarded as being Ford's savior.  

 

For that matter, Elon Musk is not a rocket scientist, but Space-X seems to be very successful.

 

 

Mack'

Thx for your view.  I  guess for sure if  I made an error, are most of these people in  the "E" group? and totally removed from ICE? I don 't think so..certainly not the new .."transformation officer charged with quality improvements".  Or is he just an "E" guy.?..again if so, reverse synergism as I see it.

 

As for Mulally, true, not a car guy, but a nuts and bolts engineer who headed up a far more complicated manufacturing process than building cars.

 

As as for Musk? Bad comparison IMO.  Did he grow a very successful manufacturing process from scratch?  I think so. Perhaps a bit smarter than the "average bear".

Like I said, Farley was going to bring his skillsets to Ford as a very successful marketing guru.  He convinced Bill that he could run the entire thing.  Just like the guy who built office furniture did.

[silvrsvt]

48 minutes ago, Bob Rosadini said:

Like I said, Farley was going to bring his skillsets to Ford as a very successful marketing guru.  He convinced Bill that he could run the entire thing.  Just like the guy who built office furniture did.

 

The Furniture guy was a desperation move IMO..given what happened back then we are still dealing with the after effects of choices made back then. 

[akirby]

Most of the changes will be on the BEV side first because you’re starting with a clean slate.  New factories, new technology, new sales and marketing model.  The volumes are much lower and you’re not bringing in profits yet so there is less pressure to rush or do stupid things in the name of sales and profits.

 

But a lot of it will translate to ICE over time.  

[mackinaw]

2 hours ago, Bob Rosadini said:

As as for Musk? Bad comparison IMO.  Did he grow a very successful manufacturing process from scratch? .......

 

Somebody else (not you) made the statement that the reason Ford has quality problems is because Farley has no experience in manufacturing.  My Musk comparison is valid.  He's CEO of Space-X and has absolutely no knowledge or experience designing or manufacturing rockets, yet Space-X is wildly successful.  Musk did what anybody who goes to management school is taught to do, hire competent people, give them the resources they need, and let them do their jobs.  

 

Ford has quality problems, no doubt about that.  But over the past several months they've hired two new quality people, Jim Baumbick and Josh Halliburton, with Halliburton coming over from JD Powers.   And now they hired John Dion as Chief Transformation Officer.  My own personal opinion is that Ford's quality problems stem from flawed engineering processes and not-the-best supplier relations.  I'm hoping that all of these new people can change how Ford does things on the ICE side.  I think the BEV side (with all of the people Ford has poached from tech companies) will be just fine.

[iamweasel]

6 hours ago, mackinaw said:

 

Somebody else (not you) made the statement that the reason Ford has quality problems is because Farley has no experience in manufacturing.  My Musk comparison is valid.  He's CEO of Space-X and has absolutely no knowledge or experience designing or manufacturing rockets, yet Space-X is wildly successful.  Musk did what anybody who goes to management school is taught to do, hire competent people, give them the resources they need, and let them do their jobs.  

 

Ford has quality problems, no doubt about that.  But over the past several months they've hired two new quality people, Jim Baumbick and Josh Halliburton, with Halliburton coming over from JD Powers.   And now they hired John Dion as Chief Transformation Officer.  My own personal opinion is that Ford's quality problems stem from flawed engineering processes and not-the-best supplier relations.  I'm hoping that all of these new people can change how Ford does things on the ICE side.  I think the BEV side (with all of the people Ford has poached from tech companies) will be just fine.

 

Musk is a bad comparison.  Telsa quality is horrible and he has more engineering-related experience than Farley does.    Must grew up in the sciences and was the lead engineer of SpaceX.  Farley has never been close to that kind of work.  

 

That being said, flawed engineering processes is not the issue.  Not even close.  It's failure to adhere to the processes we had - don't go off script.  That is something Ford has always struggled with because so many managers are looking out for their careers more than they should.  Don't let things pass through a checkpoint so your bosses don't notice and try to "catch up" behind the scenes after-the-fact.

 

That being said, component quality vs the competition is the major problem that needs solving.   (Some of that can be attributed to supplier relations/mistrust, etc.)  Ford and GM have made (slow) progress on this over time, but there are still built-in advantages that asian domiciled companies get.