As I have been reading this posting board for the past few years, what I conclude is that most people posting truly want Ford to succeed, but are very understandably extremely frustrated, and often angry with how things are going, and where they fear things are heading. Although I am not a Ford employee, I have been deeply embedded in the auto industry my entire life, and employed in it from many different vantage points since 1977. And until the past few years, I aways had Ford on a pedestal, above the other two automakers within the Detroit-3, and constantly cited Ford as the best-in-class overall Detroit-3 automaker. But now I am as concerned as most of you
Note:
dates and specifics will be approximate but directionally right on.
And absolutely none of this is criticism of any individual hard working member of the Ford troops. This is an assessment and critique of the systems under which you must operate.
So I hope that you take the historical context of my working hypothesis on how Ford got to the difficulties of today and energetically discuss it, and further improve on the hypothesis, because as much as we technical types hated the waste of time of required history classes in school:
those who ignore the lessons of history are dammed to repeat them, or at least their rhymes.
And if the lessons are ignored now, the outcome is likely to be those of all of your worst fears.
From the inception of the auto industry through the 1970s the quality of cars was frankly terrible – we literally expected them to break down all the time and rust through almost as fast. But around then the Japanese imports began to make markets share headway and by then had begin employing the Statistical Quality Control (SPC) approach of Americans like Demming. So Japanese imported cars began to be better than Big-4, and then later Detroit-3, automakers and it was hurting the Detroit-3.
To Ford’s credit, it was the first to quietly begin trying SPC methods in manufacturing in the very early 1980s, first internally to Ford, and then deploying it into the supply base requiring it of them as well.
The impact on product longevity from dramatically reducing the variability in dimensions and other key part attributes through SPC in manufacturing was so large that by about 1986/1987, when Ford’s warranty data crunchers ran the data, the cost to do a 7-8 year/70-80 K miles warranty was about the same as it had been in the 1970s for a 12 month/12 K miles warranty.
So about that time Ford launched its 5-year/50 K miles powertrain warranty and within days GM and Chrysler countered with 6/60 and 7/70. But my suspicion is that since they were further behind in embracing SPC, it probably cost them pretty dearly whereas not so for Ford.
But once anyone has conquered manufacturing quality that ends the improvement unless one tackles the source of most quality/reliability/durability issues, and that is those that are designed into the product. Manufacturing perfectly “to print” of a flawed or unvalidated part, is still going to fail at some point.
So presumably, beginning by about 1990, Ford was increasing process discipline in Product Development. The list of things that need to go right in product development, so that when the entire vehicle is assembled, you have a professional symphony and not a grade school band is endless. But the most important thing is, absolutely nothing should advance from one stage to the next unless it is fully validated. And once something is validated one must never make late changes unless they too are then fully validated before launch. The enemy of that is time pressure which is enormous. But if one adheres to everything must be validated the result will be stellar and if one succumbs to timing pressures, then you have what we have today.
So when did the product development portion go off the rails?
From the mid-1980s though about 2008, in general, Ford customer satisfaction continued to climb, and NHTSA Safety Complaints continued to fall, and Ford was the recognized quality leader within the Detroit-3.
But in about 2009, suddenly NHTSA Safety Complaints doubled or tripled and remained up there for many years thereafter. And only about one-sixth of the increase was Focus/Fiesta DPS6 transmission The rest was across the other newly launched vehicles beginning in MY 2009 and thereafter.
Before we assume something went wrong in 2009 and blame the financial and auto meltdown, we must remember that a vehicle launched in the 2009 model year began development 3-4 years earlier, and most of the major decisions are locked in, very early in the 3-4 year period. So the key date is about 2006.
In summary:
The root causes of Ford difficulties today are about 12-years old, not recent - The chronic, across the board quality and warranty issues today, and ever since about 2009, began in about 2006, but more and more pressure on time may have caused them to get worse and worse since then, for example during the Explorer/Aviator development period.
Unless the rigorous adherence to the best practices of product development validation is restored to the pre-2006 culture, the rash of issues plaguing Ford today will likely drag the company under.
Time is of the essence because even if pre-2006 Product Development culture of validation discipline were restored this week there are 3 more years of launches in which major unvalidated designs may already be baked in.
I look forward to your rigorous constructive feedback and don’t worry, I can take the barrage of arrows and bullets too.