Automotive OEMs Need To Provide Suppliers With More Complete

Autoparts Report, Dec 4, 2002

As automakers continue to pressure suppliers for cost reductions, program managers for both sides should spend more time understanding each others needs until the programs for the design and production of the parts are right, according to Jim Coleman, a veteran and certified project manager with jhColeman, LLC.

"If automotive OEMs want design-responsible suppliers to reduce costs, they should provide them with better product requirements," Coleman said. "In a sense, product requirements are the questions that product designs answer. The more specific and complete questions, the more likely that answers will be no more or less than needed."

Coleman recalled when product designs were executed in-house by the OEMs. "In those days, cost was a mere prince and not king, and product requirements were often the stuff of tribal wisdom," Coleman said. "They were legacies handed down to successive generations of in-house engineers. Of course there were requirement manuals, but the engineers smart enough to maintain them were often too busy on vehicle programs."

The design responsibility has been shifted to suppliers and contractors, and the design requirements are now a matter of contract, which are often not up to snuff, Coleman explained. "There is a flaw in this system," Coleman said, "For example: 1. There are incomplete, incorrect, or vague requirements, at one end of the spectrum; 2. There are a mountain of requirements that obfuscate key needs with dubious minutia, at the other."

Coleman, who has more than 25 years of project management experience in the automotive and construction industry, added "there is a natural symbiosis between requirements, designs and technology. Good requirements are based on what's possible today; good engineers apply the best technology to meet them. But, when new technology changes what's possible, requirements and derivative designs need to respond."

Coleman said that when OEMs provide incomplete, outdated or burdensome requirements they increase their own cost. "OEM price reduction mandates have forced suppliers to search and destroy inefficiencies," he concluded. "Now is the time for OEMs to help suppliers to design lower cost into products."