Less is More - Produce - Lear Corp. puts the interiors into GM's Chevy Express IT and GMC Savana SIT in O'Fallon, MO

Automotive Design & Production, August, 2001 by Christopher A. Sawyer

"That's easy," says Sunberg. "It's the $24-billion aftermarket business. OEMs want a piece of the aftermarket. A good deal of the time, the OEM has the same level of creativity we can bring to a project, but they're strapped, with building so many thousands of vehicles, they can't do it. We take the complexity off their hands."

That complexity includes complete program management. "A Tier 1 approach is needed to manage the supply base, instill quality control, and handle the validation," he says. "And, if you are going to market quickly, we have to come up with low-risk systems."

With validated, off the shelf components, Lear says it can set up a facility and execute within six to 25 weeks. This, says Sundberg, allows the automakers to watch vehicle line sales, "and call our team to determine a theme and pull a production plan together in-a very short time," in order to revive sales. Tire GM G-van, he says, was developed tooled and validated within 10 months of GM's acceptance of Lear's plan.