See the possibilities

Automotive Manufacturing & Production, Nov, 1997 by Gary S. Vasilash

Charlie Szuluk, says Steve Delaney, is a man who has the inspirational qualities that can cause people to do things that they might not expect they'd be likely to do or be capable of doing. He's motivational, demanding, persuasive, and driven. When Szuluk urges, "Think breakthrough, think out of the box," the words resonate with passion, not empty platitude. When he describes what must be done is to "Make the customer successful," it is clear that fulfilling rote requirements doesn't cut it. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that Szuluk is the man who is the president of a new organization formed by Ford Motor Co., an organization - or, as it is stated on the firm's business cards, an enterprise - that is unlike anything Ford has done in the past.

This enterprise, which is a reorganized array of the resources that had heretofore been Ford Automotive Products Operations, is both a part of Ford and, in a real sense, apart from Ford. That is, although it is a supplier to Ford, a supplier that Ford, in fact, owns, it is apart from the automaker in that not only does it have its own logo and identity - with nary a blue oval with flowing white script in sight - but Szuluk's mission, which he is taking on along with 78,000 others in the effort, is to get as much non-Ford business as is possible. This means, of course, working for other automakers. And if Szuluk's charisma and the enterprise's global design, engineering and manufacturing capabilities matter, then they should be getting plenty of orders.

The new organization: Visteon.

Delaney, like Szuluk, began his career with IBM. Delaney was with IBM for seven years; Szuluk was with Big Blue for 24. Delaney joined Ford Electronics Div. in 1989 as an engineer. Szuluk joined that division in 1988 as general manufacturing manager. Delaney went on to become plant manager of the Ford Markham Electronics Plant, then, in 1994, joined Ford's new Process Leadership initiative as area manager of the Ford Production System. Szuluk became general manager of Ford Electronics Div. in 1991, became vice president of Process Leadership in 1994, and was named group vice president of the then newly formed Ford Automotive Products Operations on November 1, 1996. Delaney had left Ford in January 1996, when he joined AlliedSignal Aerospace Electronics Systems as vice president, Operations. Delaney says that it was a good opportunity, particularly being able to work with a leader like Larry Bossidy of AlliedSignal. But then he was called by Charlie Szuluk, the man who insists, "We will be the best." And Delaney was let in on the vision that Szuluk had for a new type of supplier organization, the vision that would be given public life at a worldwide announcement in September 1997. Delaney was convinced by Szuluk to return to Ford, which he did in February 1997. He is now vice president, Supply and Logistics for Visteon.

The paths of the two men - fast tracks that are not exactly typical for the auto industry - are indicative of the nature of the new company.

"Our number-one resource," says Szuluk, "is our outstanding people, who make outstanding products."

Plenty of executives say things like that. Few of them really believe it. Szuluk is numbered among the few. He recalls his travels in the early '90s when Ford was building electronics plants in countries around the world. "Wherever I went, I found out that if we set stretch objectives, and our people put their mind to them, and understood that management had confidence in their ability to reach the objectives, there really wasn't anything they couldn't do. Meeting stretch objectives for our customers will drive our success."

One of the things that Szuluk says Visteon will be doing is paying attention to cost reduction efforts while making advances in technology. He maintains that while cost is certainly an Important component to any calculations, as a supplier company, full focus on cost is an insufficient approach to being a competitor. "People who rely on low cost as a strategy and chase that don't do as well as those companies that both provide low costs and develop technology," he says. Certainly, flit is an issue of piece-part costs alone, companies can go chasing low labor rates and favorable exchange rates all over the world. Szuluk observes, "If a company is just focusing on things like labor costs, they can't win in this environment." As he puts it, "What's the differentiator?" That is, there is probably not a long-term advantage for any company that's competing on price alone, because in all likelihood there is another company somewhere that will be able to produce the component at a still lower price. If a company is able to combine other attributes - such as rapid product development coupled with lean manufacturing and excellent delivery logistics - then it becomes a more valuable company. And this is Visteon's approach.

As Szuluk stated in a speech at the University of Michigan Automotive Management Briefing Seminar last August, "Producing full systems and modules from engineering to manufacturing actually gives the supplier an opportunity to be much better. Let me share something we found to be very interesting: our competitiveness and our performance improves dramatically when our engineering responsibility increases. For every product that we have engineering responsibility, we are doing very well in terms of competitiveness and customer satisfaction. So very clearly, it makes sense to engineer what we manufacture. That's very important to our product strategy, and it should be to all suppliers."