The H2: moving beyond limits organizational & otherwise - Engineer - General Motors' Hummer H2 development

Automotive Design & Production, July, 2002 by Gary S. Vasilash

IN ZERO SPACE: MOVING BEYOND ORGANIZATIONAL LIMITS, Frank Lekanne Deprez and Rene Tissen write, "The speed of innovation, shortened product cycles, complexity of offerings required by an increasingly demanding consumer--all mean that organizations must be 'all brains and no body.' Nonbrain weight should be kept to an absolute minimum, all such processes outsourced or eliminated entirely. It's the all-brain processes that add value to a company." Which came to mind when I learned about the development of the HUMMER H2. This is a vehicle that was created faster than any GM product-16 months, in all-and brought to bear the resources of General Motors, AM General Corp. (Mishawaka, IN), and EDAG Engineering Design (in the U.S. in Madison Heights, MI). This is a product that GM is having manufactured by a U.S. company--and GM president Gary Cowger said that so far as he can recall, there hasn't been a product built for GM like this for at least 50 years. This is a vehicle that was not only created by a team of engi neers, but which is being manufactured by a group of people, as well. AM General CEO Jim Armour said that once he knew all of the names of the people who worked at AM General's manufacturing plant-now plants. But as the company has grown, he can't keep track of all of the names. He noted that on more than one occasion while walking the floor recently, he's asked people for their names while engaging them in conversation. He's discovered that they're actually GM employees, not AM General. "You can't tell the difference' he recalled. There are no visible boundaries, in a sense.

This was a fast program. A program that consumers have indicated meets the requirement of the new GM mantra: "Gotta-have vehicles." A program that has used the brainpower of a variety of firms in a seamless manner. A program that is calling upon the manufacturing expertise of AM General--which has been building the original High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) since 1985. and the commercial HUMMER since 1992-an expertise that is supplemented by the implementation of the General Motors Global Manufacturing System (GMS)--the first time a company outside GM has implemented it. This is a program that has resulted in a vehicle that Cowger proudly proclaimed, "Exceeded my expectations."

It is a vehicle that was created by a new way of work. One that truly leveraged value-adding brainpower. One that may be indicative of the way things are going to be done at GM. There is enthusiasm evinced by the engineers and the manufacturing people and the marketing people and all others associated with the H2. Which is completely understandable (more about that in a moment). In some regards, the HUMMER is an automotive icon in the sense that the Corvette is. And what automotive engineer wouldn't want to work on something like that? Cowger said that he is seeing more enthusiasm within GM's ranks today than he has ever seen before. But even among the engineers who are working on the bread-and-butter vehicles, not just comparatively niche vehicles like the H2? (This is niche because the plant capacity is 40,000 on two shifts--even the Corvette plant puts out more units.) "Absolutely," Cowger responds. "We have some ways to go with some of the products. But we're getting there."

DEVELOPING THE VEHICLE. If this is a vehicle that represents a new way of doing work at GM, then let's look at some aspects of the vehicle's development. Ken Lindensmith, H2 assistant vehicle line executive, said that in order to get the project done so quickly, they had to "break some rules," do some things that others weren't doing. This was aided by the facts that (1) it was an isolated program and (2) there was an isolated manufacturing plant where it was being built. He described it as a "lean" program that not only utilized the expertise in product and process development know-how of EDAG (one of only three companies that has received a GM Worldwide Supplier of the Year Award during the 10 years the program has existed), but tapped into GM's smarts when necessary (e.g., Lindensmith said that EDAG doesn't have expertise in the area of fasteners, so they went inside GM for that). While there is an increasing amount of math-based design and processing being done on the new vehicles that are being developed and produced, the H2, Lindensmith said, is the first full-math product. "We even milled the clay model from math." He said that the whole development was so fast that in retrospect they realized it would have probably served them well to build a few more prototype vehicles for the purpose of providing the marketing people with H2s to photograph.

One of the clever things that the engineers did in developing the H2 was to borrow components from GM's line of fullsized pickups and its full-sized sport utilities. For example, the seat frames used in the H2 are the same that are used in the GM full-sized trucks, but Bill Knapp, who headed up the engineering for the H2, noted that the form, trim, and outside are unique. When you look at the gage cluster, all of the individual gages are in the same places as they are on the full-sized trucks, but the graphics--what the customer sees--are unique to the H2. They borrowed things like control arms and steering knuckles. (Note how the differences are in the places that the customer can see.) And there are places where there is a modification to something that exists. With the H2 being about halfway between the Tahoe and the Suburban in size, its prop shaft is proportionately sized: but the two ends are common. Because the H2 offers a floor-mounted shift lever, which is not available on the C/K pickups, much of th e instrument panel support could be used from the C/K, beam it was necessary to develop a magnesium beam to support the steering wheel column. This was a whole lot faster--and more efficient--than starting from a clean sheet.