Cattle prods, buses & best practices

Automotive Design & Production, March, 2003

The first Formula One race of the 2003 season will be held in Melbourne, Australia, on March 9. Taking the grid, once again, will be a team backed by the Ford Motor Co., Jaguar Racing. There was some question about whether the team would compete again this year, after last year's rather anemic showing (best finish: 3rd; total team points: 8--as compared with Ferrari's 221), to say nothing of Ford's financial circumstances. But that was then and this is now. There was a significant house cleaning, with lots of people finding themselves no longer with the team, from Niki Lauda at the top to the drivers. And there has been substantial reorganization of the undertaking, which could conceivably provide value back to the other parts of the company.

While some might question whether Ft racing is more than just an expensive (think in the $100-million vicinity, and then go up) marketing program (race on Sunday, sell--what?--X-Types on Monday?), laguar Racing is arguably the technological tour de force of the Ford Premier Performance Div. (which also consists of Cosworth Racing and Pi Research--which the current CEO of laguar Racing, Tony Purnell, literally founded in his basement). For example, where else will they get a good understanding of things like suspension components fabricated with titanium and carbon-fiber composites and seven-speed transmissions? There is that, but perhaps more important are the managerial/cultural aspects.

In speaking of the changes at Jaguar Racing, Richard Parry Jones, group vice president, Global Product Development, and chief technical officer, Ford Motor Co. (a job that puts him in charge of the Premier Performance Div.), stated last fall: "Clearly the biggest consistent issue [during the 2002 season] was a lack of a robust technical set-up in the company, and that is what we are addressing here. Another feature of this under-performance is the perception that you can buy rapid improvement by throwing money at the problem.... My approach sets Jaguar Racing up as a more engineering-oriented company with a true systems engineering approach that we believe is increasingly key to success in F1." And arguably key to success to any engineering-oriented company, even if racing isn't its raison d'etre. Parry Jones went on to say, "We aim to create a lean culture where every individual can make a contribution to the whole."

The new Jaguar Racing provides some other interesting ideas. For example, speaking of organizational management, Tony Purnell observed, "the moment your operation involves more than a handful of people, then the way the rest of the world does things--planning, management and so on--simply works better."

Purnell talked about how the structure has been changed, so that there are an engineering director and a chief engineer rather than a single technical director, which is traditional. About traditional technical directors, Purnell said, "He's required to be something of a demi-God. Not only is he expected to have a full understanding of every last nut and bolt on his car, but he's also expected to be an able manager of the whole shebang. Yet, from my own experience, I've learned that technically very gifted people are rarely very good people managers. So the first thing we've done is to separate those two aspects of the traditional director's role. It's simply too much to expect from one guy.

Another syndrome that Pitchforth described is the "London bus syndrome" as it relates to traditional functions within an Fl team (Jaguar Cars is based in Milton Keynes, England, which explains why not an LA or Chicago bus). "If a traditional technical director gets hit by a London bus, his team is in big trouble--because in F1, technical directors and chief designers and senior engineers are irreplaceable--apparently. But they shouldn't be." He said that one of his functions as managing director is to "instigate an ultra-rigorous way of working that ensures that they won't be" irreplaceable.

Speaking of what is more of a cross-functional arrangement, with individuals responsible for specific areas (e.g., mechanical design, performance), David Pitchforth, the organization's managing director, stated, "Hopefully, this rigorous new structure will prevent what I call 'cattle prod syndrome'--which is where a whole lot of people have a little poke at a whole lot of problems, leading to a whole lot of duplication from their efforts."

Pitchforth is frank about the need to create a better organization for the long term: "Jaguar Racing isn't attempting to win the World Championship in 2003: we're attempting to lay solid best practice foundations in terms of design, engineering, testing, and working systems on which we can build in 2003 and beyond."

Presumably, they're hoping for more than eight points, however.