There’s a point not of diminishing returns but implosion you reach when your only strategy is to secure cream for the top and shareholders by cuts. When you do not value skills, experience and competence, and view your workforce only as the expense and not the actual producer of value, all you get in the end is a huge fine and questionable future.
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I always wondered if it were possible to cut so deep that it would all fall apart. I’m no longer at Ford, but where I went (still automotive) I believe is going through exactly that. Several rounds of cuts, followed by too many important people choosing to leave. New hires don’t stay a year because it’s that obvious how sideways it’s all gone. People can’t get answers to important questions. No one knows how anything works. It’s impossible to get anything done and everyone is mad at each other all the time. A bit sad really.
GSR are a bunch of nameless faceless ATM for the company. Anytime they need to show they are making headway, get rid of more GSR‘s. Problem solved, look at how smart we are. How is it that F has a bigger management structure that GM??? ( isn’t GM way larger than F?) How much are they costing F?? Ohh but that’s fine look at how well they are managing the company.
A CEO should not be knowledgeable about just one field. That’s why an engineer has not become CEO because one has not emerged with a broad mindset. The CEO position is kind of like president, the position has power from a media perspective but behind closed doors other executives with engineering mindsets make engineering based decisions. A lot of issues come down to shareholders breathing down their throats to cut costs and excessive executive compensation. Quality could turn around if the company approached everything from a quality perspective and not trying to save a buck everywhere for poor quality parts/labor.
"...ummmm... OH! OH! I know! I know! Let's get rid of brackets!"
I expected things to shift to an engineering focus under DF but that did not happen. In fact nothing changed in our engineering processes as far as I can tell. Just a bunch of LL re-orgs and re-branding.
Ford supervision, LL6, LL5's +++ couldn't even operate a Burger King!!
Ford is removing talented/productive employee's and hiring engineers who only want to be in management or paid $200k a year but afraid of doing any productive work!! Present management are lax and hanging around for payout....
This company is run by jokers, we don't have real engineers as leaders, who was the last engineer that became a CEO? Both BF and JF are marketing people who just know how to play with people's imaginations, both don't know jack sh-t about meticulous engineering design and practices needed to build a product focused engineering company.