From today’s Detroit News:
“Ford CEO Jim Farley was frank in February when he said the company employed too many people.”
11 replies (most recent on top)
Applaud @4swp post
Agree with “ Blame should go to those with conflict of interests protecting defective suppliers, call them by their name, Filipe, Gray, Reyes, Hau, Kumar, etc.”
They all need to go or nothing will change
powertrain leadership has been clueless for a long time. 1st of many SNAFU's ZF 6F65/75 Trans, Ford bought the design from ZF but the design was changed to accomodate batavia Union demands and ended up in TGW records. The biggest blunder was getting Getrag DPS6, interestingly the Chief Engineer at Getrag was Ernie DaVicent who was previously the Manager of Advanced Engineering at Ford and then was working for Getrag. Many of Getrag engineers were Ford retirees now modifying DPS6 to again accommodate batavia's Union demands.
The Chief Engineer who instrumented ZF and Getrag agreements was asked to leave Ford, Craig Renneker, and now is Chief Engineer for AAM. However, the main responsibility resided not only with Chief Engineer but with the Director and Powertrain VP. The Director retired during SRD but the VP still is around, Filipe. Interestingly to mention that Filipe and former VP, Fasceti, are members of the board of Nemak, a casting supplier with Quality issues for 10R140 Transmission Case.
There is no accountability among VP, LL2, etc when they chose wrong supplier / technical partners that end up in fiascos as 6R60/75 or DPS6, etc.
It easy to blame the GSR's or the Indian or Mexican tech centers, or diversity or inverted deltas (daisys) in management even though the root cause of those failure were the Top Mgmt who were in bed with the chosen suppliers.
It is very easy to blame those who you hate for sh*t is not their responsibility.
Blame should go to those with conflict of interests protecting defective suppliers, call them by their name, Filipe, Gray, Reyes, Hau, Kumar, etc.
I called that one.. Hau sick of all this sh-t and gone by Oct1...
The first 2012 DPS6 Focus builds were all shipped to DPG to have the clutches burnished in a special drive cycle... That was the start of the nightmare... As development engineers we knew it would not end well.. We built up some Aisin 6 speeds for the 2015 MY but management wanted to stay the course. The revisions were endless..
Talent???
How about listening to your POWERTRAIN engineers that told you the DPS6 trans shouldnt be used.
In the 80's Chrysler yes the red headed step child of the industry sold a horizon miser hatchback with a 4 cyl veedub engine and a 4 speed manual tr---y that go upto 47 MPG's
And it was affordable to the common working man! How is it that today thats the same mileage you get with a prius hybred?
We are being screwed over bigtime people.
Clearly the slick looking vehicles and 3000 plus sf home were all a delusion. Hey hows that trophy wife that is 20 years your junior doing now that you are 70???
Lets be honest the DPS6 trans was launched under the leadership of Alan Mually.
He was supposed to be the best of the best.
Obviously the culture at ford is so toxic even with Alan that it is tabu to reveal problems or most importantly admit fault.
Too bad for the good people of ford.
To bad for the suppliers too this is not good at all.
The japs yes i know pronouns were smarter to not change too much from one vehicle launch to another because that created new problems also what happened to continuous improvement???
"we have too much complexity"
I remember before the SRD, they started stuffing programs full with features. The goal was to get the features list as big as possible. Now, our man concludes complexity is too high. Go figure!
Meanwhile, customers are being instructed not to park thousands of vehicles too close to buildings.
Such a bu-----t answer from Farley... our engineers are Electrical, Mechanical, Chemical and Software Engineers... If anything they have worked continuously thru the different management styles and structures. These are the same engineers who told management that the 1.6L/1.5L Ecoboost was junk, the DPS6 Trans was junk and the same ones who have been struggling with complexity and marching to a bunch of Yes Men Chief Engineers and Program directors. Fields and Hinrichs bucked the system and I figure Hau will get sick of this too. Hackett was an amazing waste of space...Jabba the Hutt or Chet...
"Once the company hires the right people and restructures, Farley said he is optimistic about Ford’s growth prospects."
So, in other words, once it's a different company with the same name, the company will grow. LOL.
He should start with himself. He is ICE and has no EV experience. Heck, Mach-E and Lightning weren't even developed under him!!
I realize February is old news, but it does underscore why many people on this site are asking "when's the next round of reductions occurring?".
A few more quotes from a February Bloomberg article ...
“We have too many people, we have too much investment, we have too much complexity and we don’t have expertise in transitioning our assets,” Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive officer, said at a Wolfe Research auto conference."
"But he also acknowledged Ford still lacks the “restructuring talent” to get the most out of its EV and internal combustion engine businesses.
ICE talent and the digital BEV talent are different; you can’t ask ICE people to do certain things, it takes too long,” Farley said. “Ford will ensure we have the right structure and talent in place to compete and win.”
"Once the company hires the right people and restructures, Farley said he is optimistic about Ford’s growth prospects."