Letters

Automotive Industries,  May, 2003  

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Consultants Needed to Streamline Plants

I just read your editorial, "Are Your Plants Efficient" (Al March, pg. 4), and you have hit the bulls-eye dead center. Although we do not have consultants on our staff, we do have several that we recommend to our prospects.

In the future, I'd like to send your editorial, with copyrights and credit to you and Al, to prospects of ours that could use your insight.

Bob Bunsey

Barcode Data Systems

Constraints, constraints, constraints! Those compromises are the result of constraints. Constraints that are imposed by management, programs, budget, time or a lack of planning. Yes, a fresh set of eyes can lead to big gains. Why? The fresh eyes are invited in by management and invited to offer suggestions. If the people on the inside were treated like the consultant--to offer all suggestions--I bet you would be surprised how much can be improved. I don't dismiss the value of consultants, but I have always noted that when the consultant's suggestions were reviewed many times they were ideas that the inside people had been harping on for years to deaf management ears. I guess somehow it sounds different from the consultant. I challenge management to treat the insiders like a consultant and challenge themselves to listen as intently to the suggestions. Make sure you don't buy new ideas you already may have if you just ask and listen.

It really does take 'fresh eyes' in ALL aspects of a business to realize that things are getting cluttered, unorganized or inefficient, not just a manufacturing plant.

How does your office look?

Roch Tolinski

Really appreciate your March, 2003 editorial "Are Your Plants Efficient." I wish more people could see it. I've shared it with the folks I work with.

Jack Rouser

Obvious to some not so to others

I noticed your article in the March issue titled "It's So Obvious" (Al March, pg. 64). I agree with your comments completely, but I continue to be baffled by the fact that since NHTSA seems to be in a serious rush to improve fleet fuel economy, they always seem to overlook the obvious, immediate and lowest cost solution in improved in-use fuel economy. For years studies that have been done have shown that Americans consistently travel with their tires underinflated. (Can you say 'Ford Explorer'?) If we really do want to reduce fossil fuel usage, improve tire life, reduce particulate emission from tires, enhance handling (with a minor tradeoff of reduced ride quality) and enhance safety, putting some of NHTSA's organizational energy into motivating people to keep their tires at the maximum rated pressure would have significant and immediate impact. But that would require more work than sending a regulation to the automotive industry and some individual accountability. Never happen.

Name withheld

I agree with the business and technical arguments you make in your March Al column.

Unfortunately, you overlook the political considerations. When the heat rises, government bureaucracies react to produce immediate results. The automakers have nobody to blame except themselves for this knee jerk reaction. Instead of encouraging small steady improvements in the standard of 0.1 mpg/yr, we have been quite happy to watch the standard plateau for 10 to 15 years. Had we supported steady incremental change, we could plausibly argue for less draconian action. It's so obvious--pay me now or pay me later.

Bill Burnett

Ford Research Laboratory

The problem is that many people are buying vehicles that are much bigger than they need. Jeff Runge was an emergency room physician and saw for himself the human results of heavy vehicles turning over and massive trucks hitting regular passenger cars.

And since light trucks are now used as passenger conveyances, why shouldn't they meet the same safety and fuel efficiency standards as cars? They have a long way to go to get to a fleet average of 27.5 mpg. It's time to start.

Name Withheld

OEM legacy costs similar to steel industry

I am writing in response to Maryann Keller's column "Showdown Over Legacy Costs," in the March 2003 (pg. 20) issue. I have been employed in the automotive industry by one of the Big 3 for almost 34 years, and the parallels between the current state of the U.S. auto industry and the steel industry of recent years are very scary. Her commentary firmly cemented in my mind the application of the terminology "legacy costs" to the automotive industry. The term, of course, has figured prominently in the demise of the U.S. steel industry, once the world's model of industrial strength and productivity. Labor unions and professionals alike have now been forced into positions of retreat as incredible corporations like Bethlehem Steel have been forced into bankruptcy in part due to an infrastructure which does not have sufficient economic strength to accommodate their own costs of pensioners benefits.

People have compared the situation to what may happen nationally to social security--i.e. that the economic burden of retirees will eventually collapse the already struggling economy.