You can't teach people experience, it comes with age. If we lose any more people with the institutional know-how, we're screwed. Do they really think that an engineer fresh out of school can do as well as somebody who's been here for decades? Of course not. If you ever wondered why there are so many recalls these days, there's your answer.
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Ford is an auto maker. You have eliminated all of the folks who recognized and advocated for the plants where product is made. No staff employees seem willing to work at a plant. This is a huge problem.
Have you noticed that you can tell the skill and experience level of the posters?
The most boastful and close minded are the often the least skilled, and don’t yet know what they do not know. Once one becomes more seasoned (experienced and skilled) one usually realizes the boundaries of their skills and knowledge and readily admits the boundaries.
One of the reasons we (the company) keep making the same mistakes over and over, is we do not have wise, seasoned and skilled individuals making the decisions. After good faith efforts to explain the folly of LL5 decisions, most of us just step back and let them face plant. There is no upside to raising the flag to higher levels as it only earns you a pink slip.
Hierarchy uber alles is and for ever shall be the Ford modus operandi.
@1evj+1eMD8U8X said
".., but to just get buy on a reputation that was developed over 40 years ago. "
Ironically that was my assessment of the Elec. Engineering program at Michigan Tech in the 90's until at least 2000. And just like Ford is doing it's relying on previous reputation while concurrently trying to do the same obvious things as other schools. (EG MTU went from quarters to semesters because "big schools like MIT & U-M were on semesters"
The problem is that business reputations are only good for 15-20 years, which means that the chickens created by Ford 2000 are all coming home to roost now in the public perception of Ford's reputation.
@ejv+1eMD8U8X "Nobody is irreplaceable". While I agree with you on that statement, we are not talking about Ford losing a few workers now and then, but a complete employee turnover. The company has been letting go droves of people because of the wrong reasons (age, not woke enough, near a pension milestone, higher than average salary) and replacing them with the friends and family plan.
While replacing an employee typically costs the company money and time to retrain another worker, there are certain key positions that are harder than the average to replace (and no, they are not the CEOs positions, like their egos would like you to think). Usually these are very technical positions, needing years of experience to master the responsibilities of the position. Too many losses of these workers can paralyze temporarily a company.
Moreover, as the company pushes for outsourcing, ageism, racial discrimination and other obnoxious policies, the remaining workers productivity diminishes, affecting the company's bottom line. So while firing one worker is not the end of the company, it could be if enough workers are fired.
I was raised with a work ethic of:
- be the hardest worker in the room
- constantly seek to improve knowledge and skills
- be kind and help others without having to be asked
- be humble
This work ethic served me well at Ford in the 1980s and 1990s.
I could see things were starting to turn in the 2000s.
By the 2010s and onward, my work ethic was clearly a disadvantage at Fords.
The advantageous work ethic at Ford now appears to be
- do as little work as possible
- take credit for others work
- blame others for your failures
- conduct smear campaigns on coworkers who are more skilled than you are
- refuse to help your coworkers when they ask for help, instead use their request against them, telling their boss that they are incompetent
- blow hot air about your skills and accomplishments
- spend your time on self promotion and bootlicking
Granted some behaviors are learned behaviors. Why work hard when you get nothing from it. However, most of the behaviors come from LL6 and above selecting employees just like themselves and/or employees who won’t be a threat to their position. Over the years the talent drain and ethical behavior drain has been epic. Amusingly Ford group think leads many to think that what is left of the workforce is awesome, however, results speak loudest.
@ejv+1eMD8U8X. Your comment is wrong! I do not know your background, but a blind person could see Ford demise since the mid 90's. Back at that time we had a product line-up where multiple vehicle line made money not just one like we have today. F-Series still makes 90+% of the profits for the company. We do not have an Explorer or Ranger making the profits like the 80s & 90s.
Also look at our vehicle launch performance the past 20yrs! We are in the dumpster. No one can doubt that Ford 2000 was not a major loss of seasoned troops walking out and the back fill not up to the challenge.
Our senior management was clueless and did very little to address these issues other than things like TVM. When Alan was in there was hope. We had a vision everyone understood from a Line worker to a WS analyst.
But for some reason Alan decided to retire 18 months before he wanted too.
The company continues to add more and more buildable combinations and complexity under the guise of revenue!
The LL6 & GSR have "ZERO" input about decision making in this process.
I sat in a meeting last year to hear a VP say that our component test standards were too stringent on the F-Series. Well, those test standards are what made the F-Series what it is today. Not TVM or any other cost saving scheme or flashy gimmicks. That kind of talk tells us we no longer want to win, but to just get buy on a reputation that was developed over 40 years ago. So that is my piece. If a package is offered, I will take it. A divorce prevented me from going earlier.
The trouble is, is that that one experienced person was directing the others how to do a task. The supervisor may know what they want done but they lack the skill in knowing how to do it. It’s easy to say go build me a watch. Difficult to actually know the steps to take to build it.
Quit your whining. Ford has been losing people and hiring people for over 100 years. Nobody is is single handedly keeping the Company together. Nobody is irreplaceable. No matter know much you know or how much you contribute, the Company can survive without you.
They operate under the theory two IQ 80s equal one IQ 160 and saves money.
Correct. Their original grand plan was to depend on co-workers taking pity on the inexperienced and teaching them. Then came the in your face age discrimination and COVID remote working. What is laughable is the desperate push to wanting to get people back in an office. What they are too arrogant to realize is that the most experienced withh not be ki----g themselves to take up the slack OR teach the inexperienced dolt because all it will result in being shown the door. They showed what they truly are and that people do not matter.