A Blowout of Trust - Firestone and Ford Motor Company

Automotive Industries, Oct, 2000 by Dale Jewett

"Everybody thinks GM and Daimler-Chrysler are rolling their hands and laughing," Upham says. "Not true. They know it's just a matter of time before it happens to them. How widespread will it be and how to handle it are the key questions."

At Ford, Firestone's status as a supplier is "day-to-day," asserts Jason Vines, Ford's vicepresident of public relations. But the automaker hurriedly resourced tires for the redesigned 2002 Explorer and Mercury Mountaineer that will be launched in January -- business that had been solely Firestone's before the recall.

How much will Ford trust suppliers in the future?

"We won't let one bad apple spoil the whole bunch," says Vines. "But we'll adopt the Ronald Reagan strategy (of nuclear-arms control) with all our suppliers -- trust but verify. Some of our suppliers will have a lot longer leash; others will have no leash at all."

A Supplier That Sizes Up The OEMs.

While automakers continuously rank suppliers in terms of performance and quality to help determine future business, Siemens Automotive follows a similar procedure, with one twist: it ranks the automakers.

Arguably, only a Tier-1 megasupplier has the clout to do it. But putting serious scrutiny on its OEM customers helps us decide which customer provides the best opportunity to develop and produce new technologies," explains Scott Whetter, vice president and account executive for Ford business at the Auburn Hills, Mich., based Siemens. Over the past few years, Whetter says he has seen moves by OEMs to try to develop closer relationships with suppliers and work in a more trusting way. Ford has a program dubbed the Business L Initiative.

"Suppliers bring in new ideas, and I think there has been a recognition by OEMs that they need to change their behavior so that suppliers will see them as a customer of choice," Whetter says. "Otherwise the new ideas will go to another OEM first."