75% of D-Ford NA was laid off today. D-Ford was Ford’s Human Centered Design Org. They were moved under Corporate Design last year, and if you know Corporate Design, you know they protect their own and want headcount. The writing was on the wall in April when Design cancelled 20 open D-Ford reqs with no explanation. D-Ford was too modern, too progressive, too inclusive to culturally fit into the very traditional culture of Design. Those not laid off are being re-assigned. Ken Musgrave is being “retired”. Every level was hit: LL4s, LL5s, LL6s, GSRs all laid off. It appears that Ford wants to return to the days of engineers and executives designing vehicles instead of research and testing to figure out what the customer wants.
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Melbourne D Ford wound up today.
@1tnn it’s rather surprising that three different groups would want to take credit for something that is two years late to market and overpriced.
For Canopy, at least 3 different groups within Ford would claim that it’s their idea.
Canopy security system for Ford Pro customers. under seat modular storage for Maverick. Power onboard F-150. In process are towing backup interface. Many patents filed for innovative, customer focused ideas.
ProPower Onboard was an outcome of D-Ford as well as the Center Console Office Worksurface that customers are buying. That team also helped set up the Lightning Frunk and what it should be as well. Most of the ideas were developed years before vehicles make it into Production. You guys know how PD works, from MR to Job1 is about 4 years so of course you are not seeing everything that the team did at this point. Some of those products have not made it to market. Not saying all the ideas were good but you know that it takes years to bring a feature to market.
Are there more layoffs coming this week for dford?
Does dford even exist anymore?
@1yyn+1nkSEWrq - was thinking the same thing. There is/was a large group at GFL, Dearborn, and London. Did all three locations get the 75% equally treatment?
D-FORD? Inclusive?? Lol
Wow 75%??? Is this real number?
So Ford is done with that division? Well should have canned it long time ago.
No revenue visions and now GAS, Amazon encroaching into automotive space with even better OS. D Ford offered nothing anyway. Current Ford interfaces won't generate any revenue.
Wasn’t D Ford Jim Hackett’s baby? I’m a bit surprised it lasted this long.
Agree with person asking what work D Ford actually ever produced. They were certainly smart and capable but it was very duplicative of marketing and PD. Best selling truck for 46 years, so I think we do a decent job with/without D Ford. Sorry for those cut in D Ford but I am not surprised
“Can you elaborate some of the ideas D-Ford came up with that made it to production vehicles in the 5+ years it has existed?”
I’ll add to this challenge - do this without including things they were given credit for that they had little to no involvement in
- D Ford has great talents
- Other Design teams also have great talents
- We don’t need to talk others down in order to talk ourselves up
- Wish everyone best luck
Can you elaborate some of the ideas D-Ford came up with that made it to production vehicles in the 5+ years it has existed?
Or what the customer will want.
It's a challenging area and our executives are not very good at design. Most executives think they can do good design or make a good ad but few can.