On August 17, 2005, " Ford Challenges Japanese Speed to Market"
Ford Motor Co. will be competitive with Japanese auto makers in quick and cost-efficient product development by the end of the year, says Phil Martens, group vice president-product creation.
Ford has tapped Mazda Motor Corp., blending some of its expertise into the GPDS, under which all future vehicles will be created.
Cost reduction varies by program, Martens says. Ford is benchmarking Mazda products, as well the competition. The total cost calculation factors in development time, test requirements and the number of engineers and equipment needed.
Ford has spent the last few years evaluating what it sees as critical paths to efficient product creation and is addressing bottlenecks or anything else that threatens to slow the process, in areas ranging from design and engineering to stamping and validation.
To this end, CATIA version 5 computer-aided-design software is being rolled out globally as the exclusive engineering interface. The advanced studio in California and one created in Dearborn about 18 months ago now are operating in sync, a collaboration that requires fewer engineers overall.
To ensure the right styling for new vehicles, marketing has been revamped up front to weigh in early on product creation, Martens says
And the product chief wants simultaneous engineering on all fronts: feasibility; design; testing and manufacturing; so all are working on the same thing, at the same time, and conversing wirelessly.
One bottleneck eliminated is in safety testing and validation.
Ford has invested $16 million in the renovation of the 12-lab Certification Test Laboratory that will be completed this summer, says Cindy Bohen, safety project engineer.
It will enable the auto maker to conduct some of the most comprehensive occupant-protection crash simulation tests in the world and make safety-related design decisions long before costly prototype vehicles are built.
Two Interior Head Impact labs send the heads of dummies into 60 different vehicle-roof points at 15 mph (24 km/h), capturing data used to engineer headliners that reduce the risk of injury in a collision.
Two Occupant Out-of-Position test areas provide data to design airbags and seatbelts.
The jewel of the facility is the new Servo-Hydraulic Reverse Crash Simulator. The “servo sled” is the only one in the world able to simulate five collision scenarios.
It simulates a frontal impact at 35 mph (56 km/h) with and without pitch (where the nose of a vehicle bows and the end raises off the ground on impact) and rear impact and side impact from two different positions – all without destroying the test device that is fitted with “bucks” representing different vehicle lines.
Susan M. Cischke, vice president-environmental and safety engineering, says the results of advanced occupant testing done at the new safety center will be shared with the auto maker’s family of brands, complementing the work being done by safety leader Volvo Cars in Sweden.
My Comments:
(Phil Martens left Ford after the annoucement of appointing Field Martens as CEO, America in Octomber 2005)
On process: It is the glue to hold the team together. It's the highway of information flow. It's should drive the culture change of a company when adopting a new product creation process. Like every company wide activities, top management should buy in to it. Only after the strong buy-in from the top get visible to the downstream of the corporate, an activity is able to be fruitful. Vehicle creation is a very complex process and need a lot of teams of specific expertise to be involved. A good process should be used to facilitate the corporation and streamline the communication in order to eliminate waste from the system, such as bad designing/engineering, late modifying, turf fighting, delaying, repeated data collection, etc. by doing the following,
Bringing all parts together lead by a powerful chief engineer
Avoiding segmentation
Clarifying the responsibilities
Standardizing the service and customer interfacing (eliminating being unambiguous, controlling the ramification and variance of information flow by shorting the route)
The ideal situation is like a living organic body. (Ok, my theory – living organic organization)
On tools: geometry creation – CATIA, used by Chrysler, Honda, Toyota(?), and European auto manufactures. A good geometry tool should be a good product life cycle management tool. To do this, it needs to have decent database management functionalities. It should also have basic functions of CAE. CATIA is the choice. A lot CAE tools have integrated into CATIA. In the future, a good engineer should be good at geometry creation and CAE simulation.
On people: The teams should have a strong sense of working toward a common goal – create a product customs love to have and company makes profits. Every member needs to be committed to the common goal. Don’t let the sense of goal get drying out downstream. Physically relocate all of the teams are not feasible economically, but relying on web technology, a virtual place should be created for a specific program. GPDS like process should be the backbone of it. A problem is how to balance the control of accessibility and sharing of information.
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