Hau Thai-Tang: searching for synergy; As the 2005 Mustang's chief engineer he hit the automotive radar screen. In his new job, he has to merge the needs of Advanced Product Creation and SVT

Automotive Design & Production, Sept, 2005 by Christopher Sawyer, A.

Ford's Product Development Center, or PDC, is located near the Henry Ford Museum, and Ford's Dearborn, MI, test track. Literally next door is Ford's Design Center; while across the street is the dynamometer building where the engines that won Le Mans and the Indy 500 in the 1960s were developed. Despite being surrounded by history and creativity, the PDC itself is a depressing place: the walls are painted an indeterminate shade of gray and punctuated by ridged glass panels well above shoulder height, executive assistants are sequestered in-between these walls and those of the offices beyond, and the offices themselves--though spacious--are painted the same hideous color as the hallway. About halfway down the corridor is the office of Hau Thai-Tang, director of Advanced Product Creation and Ford's Special Vehicle Team (SVT). It's a wonder he and his team can be creative at all in such depressing surroundings.

"At the end of the day," says Hau Thai-Tang, director of Advanced Product Creation and Ford's Special Vehicle Team (SVT), "we're trying to do more products faster. One of the key enablers for that is kicking off programs that have compatible assumptions. We didn't do a great job of that in the past." Thai-Tang's job as head of Advanced Product Creation is to go beyond the platform capability studies that determine how many derivatives can be built off a single base, beyond the external market data within which new market segments hide, and reconcile the business equation with the hardware assumptions and the design assumptions with the bill of process. Not doing this, he warns, "causes a lot of churn, revisions to the product assumptions, and it results in late changes that increase costs and cause reliability and quality gaps."

The time spent as chief engineer on the Mustang gave Thai-Tang a vision of success for his new position: assumptions that are attainable. This is a far cry from what happens in most new vehicle programs, where the cost and functional objectives are misaligned, the revenue assumptions don't support the variable cost targets, or the volume assumption is incompatible with the available capacity at the plant. "These are traditional incompatibilities that can make it very difficult for the team to execute," says Thai-Tang, "and they are often led by being overly aggressive in our market assumptions. That's what leads to subsidizing sales with incentives of some sort." Rather than handing the chief engineer conflicting requirements that have no hope of intersecting on a Venn diagram, Thai-Tang is working to develop a process that delivers targets based on reasonable assumptions, no matter the vehicle.

"We are looking at this from a very holistic perspective," he says, "and that means going beyond adding doors, stretching wheelbases, and putting different body styles on a platform. It means trying to get to that true game changer, which is something that Ford has done very well in the past." Chasing this elusive beast is only possible if the rest of the company is on solid product ground, and the product cadence set out by Phil Martens, Ford's group vice president, Product Creation helps by delivering a set grouping of vehicles on a predetermined schedule over the next four years. This gives Thai-Tang and his team time to ponder what products might be in Ford's cupboard in the 2010 to 2020 timeframe.

"The challenge for the team is to discern the untapped consumer needs, and develop a concept that hits that sweet spot," he says. A small example of the thinking behind this effort is the "My Color" instrument lighting offered on the 2005 Mustang. "No one was asking for the chance to mix colors from three light sources to produce unique instrument cluster lighting," says Thai-Tang, "but our research said this was something the customer would want." That research, by the way, looked at real estate trends, specifically the trend toward look-alike housing developments and the effect this has on interior design. "The houses may look the same on the outside," he says, "but they are very different on the inside where people show their individuality. We saw the opportunity to offer Mustang buyers the chance to customize the interior of their vehicle while keeping the same 'exterior elevation' as the standard Mustang."

Should all this sound a bit too sanitary, don't forget the other half of Thai-Tang's job: director of Ford's Special Vehicle Team. Under John Coletti's control, SVT produced a number of serious go-fast vehicles for costs well below what mainstream engineering could achieve under the corporate rules they must follow. The supercharged Mustang Cobra, Lightning pickup, SVT Contour and Focus, Ford GT, and the basis for the 2006 Shelby GT500--sans the production car's live rear axle--came from Coletti's tight-knit engineering team, his ability to bend the system to his will, and to ignore the rulebook altogether when necessary. Thai-Tang's job is to merge this rag-tag skunk works operation into the mainstream operation without killing its spirit or ability to do what's best for the company--even when that is contrary to the mainstream organization's wishes.