I hope they can lead who’s left to focus on the right priorities for Quality. If they don’t change it up and get it right, the company is lost.
6 replies (most recent on top)
STA are the key to improve quality. I do not know why that DIvision has been hit so hard. The snafu w/DPS6 was not due to Ford Design related issues, DPS6 was developed by Getrag and Ford bought it as a black box. Whoever handled DPS6 Lawsuits should have been fired, it was a supplier related quality issue. BTW, the same box in Europe MPS6 was a total success, that FOE ended up sourcing their new 7 Speed Trans to Getrag, now owned by Magna.
Quality issues after launching are 80% related to Supplier's not following their QOS and it is not specifically Tier1's but their Tier 2,3,4's etc.
Case in point, 10R140 Trans is having quality issues with their Planetary Carriers, root cause, Tier 3's not following QOS. STA team is bare bones so they barely have time to monito Tier 1's following QOS, and unfortunately most Tier 1's (Dana, Schaffler, AAM, Magna, Linamar, EFI, Continental, JTek, ZF, etc.) have a very week Supplier Quality Assurance teams.
It does not matter is the design is done in USA, Europe, China, India, Brazil, etc. In the end the quality issues are directly related to supplier's inefficiencies.
The recently name 6Sigma Chief Engineer, Jehtro Trent, raised to fame with ZF Continuous Variable Transmission made at Batavia, just to find out that the issue was not ZF's design but the suppliers chosen by Purchasing. Then, same situation with 5R110 Valve Body Quality Issues where EATON sourced to a mom and pop supplier several key components, etc.
Farley, Savona, Baumbick, etc. cannot do anything to fix quality, the key factor is make all Spvrs and Managers responsible for any Design Cr-p reaching customers. Most LL6,5,4's are CLUELESS in regards design issues but surely they have a big EGO to direct designs even though they are not robust enough.
Managers hide info about the quality of their a-s'ys so they are not to blame for any program delay. At formerly known TDE, managers like Bruck, Walega, Capoccia, Adamscheck, Grytzellius, Baum, Chickenswami, Filpe, etc. were known for hiding quality issues to VO Porgrams so their transmission could not be blamed for delaying vehicle programs. Most Transmissions had very bad quality issues just after launching that were fixed on the double, those managers knew the fixes but due to timing they were incorporated after Job1.
Purchasing is also a main responsible for bad quality since they force which supplier to pick based mainly on OCE's. Case in point, 6R140 Pump was sourced to a green field in China, the supplier was a reputable one but it was going to be the first pump they would ever made. Guess what, they had 100% rejection and ended up air shipping pumps to make VP, TT, PP, milestones. Al bruck knew about the quality issues but kept quite, 6R140 launched with questionable quality pumps then 1 year later there was a recall to replace those pumps with new ones made in Rawsonville. Bruck got accolades for not delaying Super Duty program and for fixing the pump issue that he already knew before hand. The scape goat the pump engineer my friend J Kozar who was humiliated for his bad performance.
Quality issues are known at the component level, Managers hide them for their benefit.
Here’s what Ford thinks of quality. STA is moved under PD. Just in time for the layoffs. Who do you think took the whack for layoffs in PD…. The new guys STA. Not a week after they separate STA back out from under PD. Paul Randal was the leader of this plan as he hates STA. What did he do a few weeks after all this…take retirement. “I met my numbers, this will be a mess soon, I’m out, see ya suckers”!
Elizabeth Holmes and Sunny Balwani are two executives who can build shareholder value like nobody's business. They are not available to RTO but they can WFC (work from cell).
Baumbick can have meetings on the issues but the skill set needed to fix those issues is not present. They were the folks who were SIRP'd, retired, or quit. Would need to contract out problem-solving to AVL, Roush, etc. All that will likely happen, is more peer reviews, conference calls, team building events, etc.
You imply Baumbick was put there to be successful, or quite possibly he was setup to fail to eliminate the threat.
There are more people tracking quality issues, publishing quality metrics, and generating digital tools than are actually working on fixing and preventing issues.