Chrysler Product Creation

Continue reading the book Japanese Automotive Industry for a while. Brian spinning. Need to shift a bit to other books. This time, it is The Critical Path by Brock Yates. It's more like a novel. A lot of accent of every day spoken English. Don't like the style.

It's about the process of Chrysler's 1992 plan to overhaul its minivan. Ever since the minivan was launched in 1984, it has dominating the market place. But competitions from domestic and Japanese automakers are forcing Chrysler to come up with a new generation.

1 A production planning team of 18 was formed led by Nemeth. The team is composed of the main players:
1) Frank Sanders - Financial expert, for a firm budget
2) Dick Winter - Product Planner, who created Eagle Talon, Plymouth Lser, Mitsubishi Eclipse
3) Herm Greif - Quality control and vehile evaluation expert
4) Bruce Donaldson - Manufacturing
5) Tom Edson - Very sharp project manager who are desperate for a new product

Mission of the team: The new minivan team is dedicated to design, build and deliver a product - second to none - that will ensure Chryser global minivan dominance into the 21st century.

2 Started with "Red Book", a general writing of engineering and design plans the set cost, size, weight, power, etc.

3 From "Red Book", "the architecture" is generated. H-Point is the main focus to decide the architecture. From H-point, a set of exact postions called "hard point" are decided. Hard points decide the following dimenstions:
1) Wheelbase
2) Suspenion pickup points
3) firewall and engine location
4) fuel tank postion
5) instrument panel placement

H-point is critical. To decide it needs system level consideration. H-point should be low enough for easy entry and exit. Too high, the handling performance will be sacrifice, and passengers have difficulty to enter. Expeically if the car is design for women. Too low, it's car like. Lose visibility of the driver, interior room.

(Probably will continue to insert more here)

Final approved budget: (excerpt from the book)
Vendor tools, dies, and material handling - $675.8 million
Manufacturing - $834.7 million
Powertrain (Engine, transmissions) - $91.1 million
Acustar (components purchased from Mitsubishi joint venture) - $80.9 million
Research and development - $247.0 million
Pre-production launch - $109.9 million
Update Windsor engine plant - $47.0 million