Six Sigma Anyone?

[g48150]

Detroit News Article on this

 

From this article:

 

"I'm a disciple of the Toyota production system," Mulally said, explaining that he became a student of the Japanese automaker while working as an engineer at Boeing and has traveled to Japan to study how Toyota's factories operate. "This system of continually improving the quality, putting the variations into the product line that people want and doing it with minimum resources and minimum time is absolutely where we have to go. If you look at Ford, it's the antithesis."

 

I'd love to see the look on my ex bosses face when this gets handed down, he hated Toyota and everything it stood for.

 

This is truly awesome because I was right and they were wrong, and I don't have to put up with the whining anymore. Thank god Michigan is an at will employer!!!!

[akirby]

This guy is going to be worth every penny.

[g48150]

This guy is going to be worth every penny.

 

Absolutely!!! :happy feet: :happy feet: :happy feet:

[silvrsvt]

I just hope he can get it implemented without too much resistance

[J-150]

I just hope he can get it implemented without too much resistance

 

 

resistance?

 

these little fiefdoms throughout Ford are what have truly driven it into the ground. And Bill was not man enough to take them down.

 

Alan on the other hand doesn't give a rats ass about executive friends. He's the new kid. He doesn't have any.

[g48150]

It feels good to be able to say that at least all the knowledge that Henry Ford passed down made an impact somewhere... its too bad it WAS Toyota, but at least My Boy will "bring back the funk"

 

Seriously, I wonder what all the type A personalities are going to do once the executive order comes down to "be the Toyota". Hopefully we can just build a new ship, this one was built crooked from the beginning.

Edited November 11, 2006 by g48150

[jpd80]

resistance?

 

these little fiefdoms throughout Ford are what have truly driven it into the ground. And Bill was not man enough to take them down.

 

Alan on the other hand doesn't give a rats ass about executive friends. He's the new kid. He doesn't have any.

 

It's basket case North America that's losing the cash and dragging down the rest. Funny how these "little fiefdoms" outside the USA all make money., that's because the make cars people want to buy. Take Ford Australia, last year was a tough year but - AUS$3.9B in sales, Nett Profit AUS$148M. If you could emulate that profit margin across the empire, there would be no cost cutting.

Edited November 12, 2006 by jpd80

[g48150]

It's basket case North America that's losing the cash and dragging down the rest. Funny how these "little fiefdoms" outside the USA all make money., that's because the make cars that want to buy.

 

 

Damn straight, except for 66% of PAG. "little fiefdoms" really don't occur outside of FNA, all the global operations have learned the hard way, you have to play nice and really, REALLY listen not only to the customer, but each other...

[jpd80]

So true. All the RHD countries work together, Australia produces Falcons for NewZealand and South Africa. Ford South Africa Produces Focus anf Ranger/ Courier for Australia/NewZealand. Ford England provides Transit van and next Mondeo to Australia/New Zealand. Ford US provides F250 trucks to Austrlaia/New Zealand /South Africa.

 

Now imagine if Ford NA, Canada, England and Europe worked together.

Edited November 12, 2006 by jpd80

[g48150]

So true. All the RHD countries work together, Australia produces Falcons for NewZealand and South Africa. Ford South Africa Produces Focus anf Ranger/ Courier for Australia/NewZealand. Ford England provides Transit van and next Mondeo to Australia/New Zealand. Ford US provides F250 trucks to Austrlaia/New Zealand /South Africa.

 

Now imagine if Ford NA, Canada, England and Europe worked together.

 

 

Let's all sing Imagine there's no heaven... its easy if you try... no burning hell below us... above us only sky...

 

Oh well now that's out of the way, maybe someone will be gutsy enough to "recognize the synergies" and "put the tabled options back into the matrix"

 

Seriously, its like speaking Greek. Oh well, *sigh*, there's always Toyota.... The original topic here

[jpd80]

OK, Lets focus on Toyota.

Last year they sold 435,000 Camrys, that's about 36,250/month.

The big job for Fusion is to go from 10,000/month to 35,000/month. I think this is possible now that the Taurus has been retired but it's going to take time to win back customers. This is the car to do it.

 

Sales in this sector could be bolstered by a Mustang based sedan on 109.5" wheelbase (original Falcon), a novel idea as no one is looking at this option and gives America a traditional compact.

:pig:

 

The other big area to sort out is the need for a large RWD platform that can be built in several wheelbase configurations so that different divisions can deliver unique vehicle identities (not look like clones). :blah: :blah:

 

There I go again, pretending I know anything. Perhaps some of you who really know better can tell us where the big gains can come?

Edited November 12, 2006 by jpd80

[g48150]

OK, Lets focus on Toyota.

Last year they sold 435,000 Camrys, that's about 36,250/month.

The big job for Fusion is to go from 10,000/month to 35,000/month. I think this is possible now that the Taurus has been retired but it's going to take time to win back customers. This is the car to do it.

 

Sales in this sector could be bolstered by a Mustang based sedan on 109.5" wheelbase (original Falcon), a novel idea as no one is looking at this option and gives America a traditional compact.

:pig:

 

The other big area to sort out is the need for a large RWD platform that can be built in several wheelbase configurations so that different divisions can deliver unique vehicle identities (not look like clones). :blah: :blah:

 

There I go again, pretending I know anything. Perhaps some of you who really know better can tell us where the big gains can come?

 

 

Its going to be in the "B-car" and "People Mover" platforms, fo shizzle.

 

I WANT the F250 Super Chief, only if its niche though, I think a volume akin to the Ford GT would be plenty enough to generate positive cash flow, at least until I can get Hydrogen at the corner "gas" station.

 

Meanwhile Toyota's Tundra only has to take 10% of the market away from the F150 to be considered a success. Not a bad target number and should be EASILY attainable given the right conditions.

[RichardJensen]

The big job for Fusion is to go from 10,000/month to 35,000/month.

This is not in the cards. Ford wants a whole slew of products that sell 100-150k a year.

 

It's the law of large numbers, if you have a variety of products, none of which sell in high volume, then you have less riding on each individual product, and if some products decline year over year, others increase.

 

Ironically, it's been this strategy at Toyota, not the Camry, that has driven their growth over the last several years. They have introduced many 'niche' products, some have done exceptionally well (Prius), others have not (Echo), but where they have made mistakes, they've gone back and fixed what was broken.

 

As to global products, there is still room for improvement. C1, EUCD, CD3, D3, all these platforms have been rather ad-hoc throw-together things. They need to systematize the development of global architectures. The global architectures Ford has developed have been far superior to those developed by GM, but Ford has not been as systematic about developing them, updating them, and using them across all 6 continents.

[jpd80]

This is not in the cards. Ford wants a whole slew of products that sell 100-150k a year.

 

It's the law of large numbers, if you have a variety of products, none of which sell in high volume, then you have less riding on each individual product, and if some products decline year over year, others increase......

 

Richard,

Is this over reliance on one or two market sectors seen as part to the past problem?

Perhaps what you say is right but, maybe flexibility in production numbers to satisfy market spikes or troughs, cars that become flavor of the year is that a better way?

Edited November 13, 2006 by jpd80

[RichardJensen]

Richard,

Is this over reliance on one or two market sectors seen as part to the past problem?

Perhaps what you say is right but, maybe flexibility in production numbers to satisfy market spikes or troughs, cars that become flavor of the year is that a better way?

There are two considerations: One is that the U.S. market is balkanizing: more makes and models for sale than ever before, the thinking is that vehicles that are narrowly tailored for a carefully defined and studied segment of the population will be more popular within that segment, they will sell for a higher transaction price, and will have stronger year over year performance. That's one consideration.

 

The other is the realization that barring some major economic shift, the U.S. market is relatively mature, and will hold to this rough volume of new car sales for the foreseeable future. In such an environment, with Honda and Toyota having very solid entries, it's not considered feasible for Ford to get a lot of volume out of the midsize segment. There's no room for expansion.

 

Flexible tooling and manufacture does not necessarily translate into being able to build vehicles at more than one plant cheaply. The ability to deliver the core components (suspension pieces, powertrain, interior componentry, etc.) to more than one site is there, but the cost of tooling up extra production for stamping makes it costly (and relatively time consuming) to add capacity to meet demand for 'flavor of the month' vehicles. Also, once that capacity is added, the tendency is to keep it, which leads to incentivizing and heavy fleet sales to keep volume up. Ford went that route with the Taurus. It leads to something of a death spiral of incentives and fleet sales.

[jpd80]

In respect to cars, accountants say it's better to sell half the number of items at twice the profit (private purchases) than to sell bulk numbers at borderline profit (fleet sales). What's beeen chased for years, the fleet market is not worth it. So get out of fleet sales?

 

In the Aussie market, 80% of Falcons and GM Commodores go to Governments and fleets. Two years later they dump them onto the second hand market for the fleet purchase price. You can imagine what this does to depreciation values. Holden has taken the lead and reduced sales to fleet, they seem to be selling lots of the more profitable V8 sports sedans to private buyers these days. Seems like the Japanese can have fleet sales all they like.

 

This would indicate Mulally's formula for Ford is right, a smaller more profitable car company.

Edited November 13, 2006 by jpd80

[biggyj1206]

OK, Lets focus on Toyota.

Last year they sold 435,000 Camrys, that's about 36,250/month.

The big job for Fusion is to go from 10,000/month to 35,000/month. I think this is possible now that the Taurus has been retired but it's going to take time to win back customers. This is the car to do it.

 

Sales in this sector could be bolstered by a Mustang based sedan on 109.5" wheelbase (original Falcon), a novel idea as no one is looking at this option and gives America a traditional compact.

:pig:

 

The other big area to sort out is the need for a large RWD platform that can be built in several wheelbase configurations so that different divisions can deliver unique vehicle identities (not look like clones). :blah: :blah:

 

There I go again, pretending I know anything. Perhaps some of you who really know better can tell us where the big gains can come?

 

The problem with your argument about getting the Fusion to 35,000 vehicles a month, is that the plant capacity where the fusion is built is 300,000 cars a years and not to mention that the milan and MKZ are built there too... But I do agree I think it could sell 35,000 a month