As usual our leaders believe laying off (VIP) employees will solve most of our financial instability, when everybody knows it's only a reprieve. What we really need is to implement a long term substantial plan, one that will be able to weather the crisis the auto industry is in. But will that be done when layoffs are an option? Of course not.
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There is not much talent development at Ford, to be specific they don't seek out people that have high capability and have done strong performance year-over-year. They will look at candidates that fit certain quotients, and they get a very much hall pass on all the mistakes they make. so you have a mixture of good talented management (extreme minority), Hall Pass management, and sharks that will cut you in half given the chance.
A LL4 once told me Ford outsources wisdom and skill. This in a conversation about why Purchased Services were used instead of training Ford employees.
Management over complicates things with division of labor to the point where it is nearly impossible for Ford employees to become skilled as each only knows a small bit about a process or technology. I was expressing to that LL4 that this was not in Fords best interest. Little did I know at the time that this was by design.
Post ID: @4nhn+17K8qQAE;
Being in PD my career, I'm not clear on what some of those tasks are but I guess I would be concerned also if I were you. I'm sure the company would outsource engineering if they could get a similar outcome at a significant savings. As I said in my previous post, in my group we have a 50/50 split between Ford and PS'. If they replace all of the engineers with PS's positions that would save the company $10M per year (my estimate). The problem is they know they can't do that and get the same outcome. Bottom line, loyalty to a company is a thing of the distant past. If something or someone can do a job at less cost, that person or group will be replaced.
Can’t speak for all of IT, ITO uses contractors and purchased services to do all the “heavy lifting”
Specific examples
Mainframe storage all the heavy lifting is done by IBM contractor. So much so that major outages resulted when the IBM contractor was unavailable as all the knowledge and storage specs were in the IBM contractors head and laptop. This has been true for around 20 years.
Mainframe automation all the heavy lifting has been done by IBM purchased services. The IBM PS did all the set up, coding and configuration. Whenever anything other than basic issues arise, IBM PS are brought back in.
Mainframe source code management team all the heavy lifting was done by CA(broadcom) PS.
Mainframe Performance and Capacity Planning all the heavy lifting is being done by one contractor who is ex IBM. The solution for any problem is to buy a bigger mainframe and/or bring in team of IBM PS.
Mainframe Database administrators all the heavy lifting is being done by one contractor, the Ford employees sit and wait for him to do work.
Mainframe database systems team all the heavy lifting is being done by one contractor, again the Ford employees sit and watch.
Mainframe TP team all the heavy lifting is being done by two contractors.
Mainframe operating systems team all the heavy lifting is being done by the contractors.
Having worked in multiple areas in IT operations, this is a consistent pattern.
The work horses who were Ford employees all leave for greener pastures. Those content to collect a paycheck settle in for a career.
A lot (ACD, those who remember) of system and component design / manufacturing was spun off during the Visteon split, part of Jacques Nasser' grand plan to get out of the parts business. I believe that a good portion of the system level design has come back to Ford over the last 15 years. I work with program DnR engineers at the systems level. I don't know about IT, but I would disagree that PS' are doing the "heavy lifting" in PD. In my corner of PD, we have about a 50/50 split between PS and Ford. All of the PS positions are general support only and not so called "heavy lifting" tasks.
Post ID: @2pwz+17K8qQAE, Please provide some specific examples of your claim.
@2uai+17K8qQAE Curious what is being outsourced by PD in your area?
I thought PD outsourced most of the heavy lifting to suppliers, thanks for confirming that.
We see the same in IT, contractors and purchased services do all the heavy lifting while employees watch and get credit. The company would be better off to eliminate the employees and let the good contractors do the work.
Unfortunately the other thing we see in IT app development and maintenance is crowd sourcing of contract work. Contract companies bring in a lot of warm bodies, many of which are newbies with zero experience- then they crowd source the newbies work to make it appear that the newbie is skilled.
Much of PD doesn’t develop or design anything....., the suppliers do it all while ford Pd tracks and reports. A 50% cut in Pd,purchasing, & STA is needed now!!!
Agree the company is too top heavy and too non-value add heavy.
The management tree needs a serious pruning, 50% would be a good start.
The non-value add positions also need to go. The process creators, the paper pushers, the pot stirrers, the feel good namby pamby positions, the fake reporting positions, the project management positions that were created to manage a project because 30 people are “working” on a project- when in reality two people are doing all the work and if you just let the two people work the other 28 and the PM are not needed. I could go on, but every school boy knows the lay of the Ford land.
This company would be a lot better off if it would let the engineers do their jobs and get rid of all the paper pushers and trackers.
You are correct, Ford should be run like their suppliers staffing levels. Cut the executive level Down to the LL5’s.
There is still a need to remove at least another 10-15 percent as all areas are bloated and have been for years.
My last job in PD, in Global Planning (prior to me taking the PRP), if I worked 2 hours a day that was a busy day. When I was in PD on a vehicle program - maybe 4 solid hours of real work to do was a busy day. Walk by the Finance guys - day trading all day long.
Tell me I am wrong.