Hello Kobalt,
The reason Ford USA specs are difficult, and in many cases unreasonable and meaningless, is from something I call <Ford Disease>. Ford Disease is a preventive mindset that drives all the worker bees to never, ever, allow anything that could cause a product warranty recall. So, the balance between risk and value to the company as a whole is mitigated by this intense desire to avoid do anything that could remotely attach a product recall or warranty claim to your desk.
Now Ford employees will deny this paradigm is in fact a de facto standard, but it is. And, just for fun I'll often playfully accuse a Ford employee of this.
I'll give you an example. There is a product in global use, including at Ford Europe, for 19 years. For 13 of those years this product type is used on an exterior application for Opel for vehicles sold in Australia. They have a bitchin sun in Austrialia, so if it works there, it will work in North America. I spent 3 years and 220,000 clownbucks validating this product for Ford North America. They are still not using it, even for interior applications!!! The cost savings is at least 30% relative to the current product type used. How good is this product? Every Mercedes Benz from 1993 to 2001 used it, and some models still do. But it is not good enough for the Ford Taurus because some dimwit (who replaced the first dimwit who was also terrified to approve it), is not satisfied that it performs well enough on an emulated/simulated sunload test. I did mention it has been used globally for 19 years and ZERO warranty claims.
As a footnote, just for fun we had an OPEL engineer write and sign a letter to Ford explaining the good performance, the costs savings, and the complete lack of warranty claims. In my 21 years in the business I've never seen anything like that before, but was it effective? No, because of Ford Disease. To quote/paraphrase Eddie Murphy, that Ford Disease is like luggage, once you get it, it is for life.
The good news is that the new CEO has brainpower (unlike the inbred moron Bill Ford Jr.) and he is busting down this bs.
GM is actively going to global specs, and they are very focused on making sure they are <right-sized> for risk to value.
I've got plenty more examples to post if anyone is interested, but that one should give you some idea of the cultural problems at Ford North America.
GT
TH
PS, the answer to your question by PM is yes. As a joke only. My original moniker was Thurston Howell. The <third> was left off, but the third letter of the alphabet should provide the answer <g> |
