Designing automobiles for global value: Ten market trends

Design Management Journal, Fall 2001 by Lockwood, Tom

DEVELOPMENT

Identifying pathways essential to remaining competitive in the automobile industry, Tom Lockwood discusses cross-disciplinary design teams, fast and precise communication among divisions and with suppliers, consolidation and the sharing of platforms and technology, and designing with virtual rather than time-consuming clay models. Lockwood notes, however, that all is for naught without distinctive branding and evocative styling.

"We wanted a car we could sell in 42 countries." That was Bryan Nesbitt's goal in designing the PT Cruiser, 2001 Motor Trend Car of the Year. Nesbitt wanted the PT Cruiser to appeal to the European sense of utility and the American sense of fun, because it's the combination of functionality and style that gives a good product an edge nationally and globally. The Cruiser got its "edge" on both sides of the Atlantic, selling 175,000 a year instead of the expected 70,000. A Chrysler senior design manager told me that "they love it" in Europe, "especially in Paris."

A decade ago, the differences between cultural design preferences and the communication inefficiencies caused by geographical distance would have made this kind of international appeal difficult, if not unthinkable. But the Internet now allows designers, engineers, and marketers to disseminate ideas globally in a matter of seconds and keep close track of cultural preferences, trends, and design processes. Designing for global value is becoming not only feasible, but crucial for car companies competing in an increasingly international market.

Communication technology has prompted companies to rethink not only the scope of their market appeal, but also their creative processes, internal organization, and design-to-completion time. How are these changes affecting the automotive industry overall? What new directions might we expect?

I have put together a quick overview of the latest trends in automotive design across the globe. Some of them fall more under the heading of design, some under process. Let's look at the "process" trends first.

Process trends

#1. Global networking-Accelerating innovation and streamlining design processes

The Internet allows inventions, car designs, and engineering breakthroughs to be instantly accessible to people in different departments of the same company, as well as to vendors around the world. With increased access to diverse information, the rate of design innovation is accelerating rapidly. Departments and employees formerly separated may now communicate as if they were in neighboring cubicles, cutting down on

process delays.

But intra-company communication is not the only result. Companies in different geographical sectors of the industry now have better tools to "look over the shoulder" of their competitors. In interviews conducted a year ago with German, American, and Japanese car companies, I found the Japanese had been eyeing the Americans' embrace of open-minded innovation, trying to see how they could increase their own creativity. Americans found the Japanese organizations to be more integrated than their own, with earlier vendor involvement, allowing them to move from design to market in an average of 24 to 30 months, as opposed to the 36 months more typical for American companies. German companies, which use teleconferencing and employee rotation to keep up interdepartmental communication, have observed American companies' efforts to locate their departments in the same building, allowing not only structured communication but also off-hand brainstorming and an increase in team energy.

The result of this inter- and intra-company communication, enabled by computer networking, is that design processes are becoming more and more similar among departments, companies, and countries.

#2. Cross-fertilization-Company conglomerates and employee transfer

Of course, the Internet is not the only reason for the increasing similarities among companies' design processes. Increasingly, companies are consolidating into conglomerates under the same ownership-for example, Ford, Jaguar, Mazda, and Volvo. These formerly different companies with diverse brand images are now free to exchange design processes, adopting one another's strengths and making their overall organization more similar.

Design processes are also exchanged when employees leave one company for another, allowing the new company to incorporate the strategy of the previous company. Last year, for instance, DaimlerChrysler hired Audi designer Freeman Thomas, who did the first sketch of the Audi TT and is expected to lead Chrysler design into a new phase. Similarly, a few years ago Ford hired Volkswagen's J. Mays, who designed the concept car that led to the new Beetle. Interestingly, these two men had actually worked together in Europe and collaborated on the New Beetle.

Reacting to criticism about its bland designs, GM has been rapidly hiring young, inspired designers. Most recently, they snagged Bryan Nesbitt, the 32-year old designer of Chrysler's PT Cruiser, to head the design studio for Chevy, GM's biggest brand. Nesbitt joined Chrysler right out of Art Center College of Design, in Pasadena, California.