Concurrent Product Development In Automotive Industries

Evidence that CE helped each of the Big Three at various points during past decades is convincing. However, the institutionalization of concurrent product development (CPD) systems as a permanent means of developing and manufacturing automobiles has a jagged trajectory. In times of recession or poor management, US automotive companies reverted to mechanistic bureaucracy and the rigidity of serial product development systems in ways that were vastly expensive.GM formed a joint venture with Toyota to learn their methods of production. The contrast was so great that GM did not believe they could transfer Toyota practices directly into their corporation. Consequently, they formed, a new kind of company for building a new kind of car called Saturn outside of its mechanistic corporate bureaucracy. But ways of working in the larger GM corporation were largely unaffected by the successful demonstration of benefits from concurrency at Saturn. A charismatic leader from Chrysler, Bob Lutz, infused concurrent engineering (CE) in product development at GM, but his initiatives suffered during the Great Recession of 2009.Ford decided to change from within and formed a secret incubator for organically growing concurrency practices from within. Ford Alpha Simultaneous Engineering trained thousands of engineers in executing CPD projects to improve their cars. Analyses of survey data from Alpha employees detail their successful incorporation of CPD practices the Ford 2000 initiative which enabled them to earn the most revenue of any company in the history of the industry at the turn of the century. Ford Alpha alumni helped transform the company. But much of its gains were squandered by the Firestone tire debacle and undisciplined development practices. Only after an outsider from Boeing’s 777 program based on CE came on board as CEO did Ford regain its competitiveness by reinvigorated deployment of CPD.Chrysler perfected a product platform approach to car development that leveraged the benefits of CPD and a diversity of best practices. Its approach in 1994 helped it rise to the top of profitable, quality auto production among the Big Three for a halcyon period of six years. Strategy, Process, Organization, Tools/Technologies (SPOT) diagnostics documented the deployment of many concurrent practices and their remarkable adaptation of the Japanese Keiretsu system. Chrysler’s relationships with suppliers were to best of any enterprise in the SPOT databank. Partnerships with suppliers helped them make more money from their Large Car division in the six years before the turn of the century than during prior company history. But the Daimler acquisition and the Great Recession severely damaged Chrysler which became controlled by Fiat. Table 16A provides readers with practices that synergistically interact with supplier partnership relationships to generates sales from profitable new products.