TRAVERSE CITY – Opening the Monday session on manufacturing in the era of Discontinuous Change, CAR CEO Dr. Jay Baron quoted from Thomas Freidman’s book, “The World Is Flat.” Freidman claims globalization “is good for everyone.” Not everyone in the audience appeared to agree, however.
Joseph R. Hinrichs, Ford’s V-P for North America Manufacturing, and honcho for the company’s Move Forward Plan, admitted, “much of change is painful.” Much of the pain was borne by 37,000 hourly and salaried Ford folks who said farewell to the company so far this year. But, during the same period, Henrichs said, Ford has been winning awards for quality and warranty costs are down by $700 million. Life at Ford seems full of surprises.
Today’s BIG surprise, of course, came at Chrysler where golden-parachuted former Home Depot chief Robert Nardelli was named CEO, Tom LaSorda moved down to the number two slot, COO Eric Ridenour resigned, and super star Wolfgang Bernhard seemingly decided he didn’t want to join a team that can’t shoot straight.
A strong signal of future change may be seen in Kuka Automation’s success operating a 335,000 square foot body shop within the Jeep Wrangler plant in Toledo. Kuka engineered, built, equipped, staffed and even financed the body shop. Kuka’s Larry Drake acknowledges that “Chrysler helped.” It’s unconventional, but it works. The body shop employs 245 robots plus numerous humans including a battalion of Jeep retirees called back to active duty.
Other signals of change: Bishop Technology Group’s managing director Bruce Grey sees an accelerating shift to electric steering. Peter Zierhut of Haas Automation says he expects other machine tool makers to follow his company’s distribution strategy of Haas Factory Outlets. These are not bargain shops, but stores where prospective CNC buyers can see, try and buy locally. Doug Woods, president of Parlec International, and a director of the Association for Manufacturing Technology, says AMT is pulling together open format software that will, at long last, enable production products from multiple manufacturers to communicate with each other in real-time. According to Woods, the formula for the future involves sensors plus wireless plus services that, by speaking mutually understood languages, will collect data, send data and leverage data and finally bring the manufacturing world’s own Tower of Babel crashing down. The AMT software will be free, available from the AMT’s web site and is scheduled to be demonstrated at ITMS 2008.
ON DISPLAY: Chevvie’s Dale Earnhardt Jr. “Big Red” Silverado. It’s a beautiful brute of a four-door pickup, just right for the guy (or gal) who wants to be hauled around by a 6.2L Vortec V-8 and have a locomotive air horn to blow lesser vehicles out of the way.
ALSO ON DISPLAY: Diminutive red-haired dynamo Eleanor Josaitus, co-founder and still-energetic champion of Focus:HOPE. Each year she brings a bevy of bright-faced young people with her to this international automotive conference. Why? “Because we want to train our young engineers to be critical thinkers, and this is the place for them to learn how.”
This is a special report to MITechNews.Com written by Neil Jackson of Hudson Mills Communications
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