Building bridges

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

So what, you may be wondering, does the study show? Fundamentally, that 90% of the respondents acknowledge that there are two distinct world views between the design people and the manufacturing people. I'll bet that none of you - and I should point out that the circulation of this magazine includes people who are on both sides of the divide - are surprised . . . Okay, maybe some of you thought the number would be higher.

I must admit, however, that I am taken aback a bit by the finding. In July, 1987, the predecessor once-removed of this magazine, PRODUCTION, ran a cover story on simultaneous engineering. When we developed that story, it didn't seem that we were particularly ahead of the curve in describing how a variety of functions - design, engineering, manufacturing, finance, marketing, etc. - were coming together in teams to execute programs. One of the better examples we included was the concept of development as a game of rugby, an approach attributed to Honda, wherein members are quickly interacting, moving the ball back and forth as they rapidly progress toward the goal.

And for at least the last 10 years the term team has been used in industry at a rate perhaps equaled only by the velocity of government spending. Perhaps team has been used so often that it has ceased to be meaningful, just as the size of the federal debt is unimaginable to all but a handful of quantum economists.

During a panel discussion of some of the survey results, Frank Ewasyshyn, vice president, Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Chrysler, commented that Chrysler has a program in which vehicle engineers go into manufacturing for a couple of years and manufacturing engineers go to vehicle engineering. He noted, "It's easier to get vehicle engineers to go into manufacturing and to come out than it is to get manufacturing engineers to go into vehicle engineering and to come out." That is a telling observation.

Joe Spielman, vice president and general manager, Metal Fabricating Div. & Manufacturing Centers, GM, in effect, seconded that when he pointed out that GM has die engineers working in the GM design studios and he described it by saying, "It's like Atilla the Hun visiting the Vatican."

So who is to blame for the gap? As Shakespeare once put it, "The fault lies not within our stars, but within ourselves." The finger needs to be pointed right at each and every one of ourselves. Manufacturing has long had a reputation of being dirty, dull and dangerous. As you well know, that was generally true. Today, it is generally false. Cultural change is said to be the key to bridging the gap identified in the SAE study. But who would want to embrace a culture characterized by dirt, dullness and danger? It is up to manufacturing people to let people know what's really going on, to explain that many times the appropriate technology being employed in production facilities tends to be as sophisticated as anything used in any industry on earth.

One of the fundamental difficulties that exists is that key people within product producing companies tend to think of firms as being product companies and forget - or at least deftly overlook - the producing parts. I'll be willing to bet that there are a whole lot of people in the world's largest manufacturing company, General Motors, who don't give the slightest thought to the manufacturing process - unless one of the GM plants is on strike and the value of their stock is negatively affected.

What is to be done? Well, as a start, manufacturing people ought to make it clear to their colleagues - and note well that they are colleagues - that they are an important part of the process and that they aren't a breed of ill-mannered, metal-bending marauders. Ewasyshyn told me in no uncertain terms that manufacturing is hard, and that it takes a different type of person who will endure it day-in and day-out. But I would be proud to be represented by Ewasyshyn or Spielman or a number of their colleagues at other manufacturing companies. They have learned the lesson, it seems, of bridging the gap.

Now the rest of us have to learn to build the bridges and to construct them so that we can accelerate the process of producing the most competitive products possible.