Thread regarding Ford layoffs

@mdk your comment is spot on, but here we are, with leadership thinking we will survive with $60 annual subscriptions to Canopy 🤣

They need 17,000 subscribers just to pay CEO Moran’s million dollar salary…where are they going to find that?

@2cgz+1m02xOdw "Maverickize The Fleet!" is a lot better rallying cry than a lot of slogans. let's hope the next CEO picks it up.

@mdk+1m02xOdw is right. Ford was not founded to make "luxury" cars, but cheap and good enough vehicles for the masses. As people don't go to Walmart for luxury items, people don't go to Ford for luxury vehicles, just for affordable "Ford tough" vehicles.

We lost the tough part and we lost the car market. Our vehicle prices keep going up. Even Tesla, which we know IT IS A LUXURY brand, have reduced its prices 3 times already in this year. How can we compete having high prices during inflation, rising interest rates and possible a recession?

Reducing complexity and price can be achieved by producing BASIC line ups. Around 25% of the complaints for new car buyers are related to infotainment, so why not produce a simpler quality vehicle? A basic quality lineup could bring global revenue. Ford sold 3 times more F150s in US than Toyota sold Corollas, but worldwide, Toyota sold twice as many Corollas as Ford sold F150s, showing there is demand for basic and reliable ICE vehicles.

These are the times when the company needs to go back to its roots. It is not about making a huge profit, nor about the stock price. This is about the survival of the company. Focus on quality, bring back the best engines and trans designs, provide a good warranty (and honor it), and will be back into the game in no time.

Automation is coming. The middle class will become even smaller.

You see the road map. Prepare accordingly. Or don't complain when you get replaced with a machine.

Like maga says - quit crying and work harder.

@1gro+1m02xOdw - forty years of robotics and plant automation down the road and finally now your team has the wunderkinds needed to do it right for the first time. Thank goodness our saviours are finally here.

Ford leadership is doing the right thing. Less complexity and higher prices will lead to much higher profits for FoMoCo. My group is focused on adding automation to our assembly plants. This will help eliminate unnecessary labor force and improve quality with machine-like consistency.

Ford was dead when Hackett told the world we were not making any more cars. Look about yourself next time you are on the road. Lots of sedans out there. Once the Taurus was the number one selling sedan and we renamed it to the 500 and then back to Taurus.

I was at my local dealership the other day inquiring where the coolant might be going in my 2017 2.0L Escape and I was looking at an Explorer on the showroom floor. It had paint flaws, door, hood and hatch alignment issues. As a dealer I would be ashamed to put it out on the showroom floor.

Sad state of the company for sure.

Complexity reduction conventionally leads to head and resource reduction, which contradicts with managements’ career growth.

Reduce management rank will automatically reduce product complexity.

@rfl+1m02xOdw I worked on one of the IT systems that had to deal with the insane number of build combinations. We celebrated when we heard Mulally saying there should just be 4 build variations. I.e. Basic, Mid-Level, High-Level, and Luxury. Of course the middle management levels over-rode the senior level directives at every opportunity.

If I had a dollar every time I had to explain factorial math to a mid-level manager - and them basically calling me a liar, I would be very wealthy indeed. They just could not believe that adding another 10 option permutations added that much complexity / computer processing time.

4 factorial is 24
10 factorial is 3,628,800
20 factorial is 2,432,902,008,176,640,000

And then there were the rules such as this option can only be added if the moon is blue and the paint is black and the rims are purple ……….. such fun, NOT

@kej+1m02xOdw

Must be from IT, does not know what it is doing and telling others what to do.

Do u know IT is the largest Ford internal organization?

@kej+1m02xOdw ... i dont think engineering decides the buildable combinations. product planning maybe? alls i know is, most of those buildable combinations have too much cr-p in them. i know i dont want half of that junk. maybe a lot of people do? or do they just get it because that's all that's on the sales lot? this seems to be a common complaint on line. maybe this is why maverick is selling so well. basic. functional. that is the good history of ford. maverickize the fleet!

Ah ba----g the old complexity drum like it's some newfound invention. Engineers have been complaining about complexity for decades i.e. more EDT, added design work, more cost, low volume drives tools which can't be amortized, drives TVM etc. Acting like it's some novel idea, GTFO.

Ford leadership placing strong focus on complexity reduction is the right thing to do in this era. We do not need so many unique features that few will even pay for. Engineering let all these combinations get out of control.

Streamlining is how we can reduce number of resources needed and can actually improve quality as well. Win win.

Was there any mention of improving quality

So… I hear “reducing complexity”….. then I hear “add more variations”….

How are these both true