That sit in meetings and watch leadership struggle to pick the most logical path forward and then pile on a bunch of worthless studies that go nowhere only to see the program get cancelled or completely redone a year later. The logical path then has no time to be optimized for robustness/weight/cost if the program goes forward and the company loses in the end anyways. How will this company survive if that is modus operandi?
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Continious improvement is the simple answer nothing new here
I choose #1... break out the popcorn and get paid over $100 k to do it. It's the Ford way.
I think at the working level (GSR) - more people think as you do a lot more than either of us may think. Just look at the reaction on your post (8 positive - 0 negative as I write this reply). But what can anyone actually do about it. You going to raise your voice and tell your manager(s) that their ideas don't make any sense. That will lead to you being labeled a "non-team" player and placed on the next company downsizing list.
You only have 6 choices:
(1) just sit there...do your best at your own job...and enjoy the show
(2) get more and more frustrated each day, destroy your mental health, etc.
(3) go somewhere else, just to find out it works pretty much the same way (give or take)
(4) start your own business and control your own destiny (to some degree at least)
(5) become homeless, move to San Fran and get free food, needles, legal care, etc. Downside is you have to live in a tent on the street and the food out of a kettle isn't good.
(6) commit a crime where the prison gives you free food, free healthcare, free gym memberships, free tablet, free phone, free clothing. Downside - you will wish you could go back to useless meetings listening to managers who can't make a logical decision rather than listen to the logic of your new cell mates.
I think as long as any of us work for a larger corporation, things sort of always will be messed up. It is sort of why most of us can complain about government services...nobody in the government is personally liable/accountable. When is the last time you heard of a government bureaucrat/politician at a high level being fired for their horrible performance? It just doesn't happen.
Basically, my summary is - stop trying to use logic or trying to make sense of it. It will never make any sense. The same is now true of most institutions (not just corporations). Education, media, legal, healthcare, wall street, sports, etc. Anyone who works for any of these institutions who (like you and I) care, want to improve efficiency, etc. are going to get frustrated very quickly in the current environment. For example, imagine you wanted to be a good journalist. So, you went to a great journalism school. You kept your ethics about truth, fairness, and honesty and finally land a great job at a large media institution. Then you find out many of the core values you believe in aren't actually followed in your industry. Profits rule over truth. Sensational/click-bait headlines rule over an average good story. You can only create stories that follow the political narrative of the organization. And nearly everyone is backstabbing you in order for them to obtain some prestigious journalistic award (shaped weirdly and made out of crystal) that they actually just award to each other and then put on their mantles in their homes and brag to all their friends about. That environment pretty much demoralizes a good journalist who just wanted to tell good, factual news.
Same thing happens here. You (and I) went to school to become a good (pick your career field - engineering, finance, operations, etc.), then find yourself here at Ford after a few years sitting in meetings and watching leadership struggle while people like you and I are thinking - why can't we just take / follow the logical path?
For LL3 or above, "robustness" is a dirty word. They want only cost and weight, which are lot easier to achieve w/o robustness.
So you will never get to do your optimization until the "real" weight target is on the table. Recent history suggests that the "real" weight target comes really late. Faked numbers are all over the place.
Because there is no "robustness" in the system, most platform work is repeated for the tophats. This is not a cost on the book. No worry until you actually want to buy a vehicle.
Yep, you need a meeting to get to the next meeting (so that everyone knows what's going on). Then, the next meeting brings up possible issues so it's back to researching those issues and setting up another meeting. This goes on for every issue until it's either dumped or moves onto the next level.