Very brief automotive update.
More friends and good contacts gone from Ford as of last week. And, to my great concern a very old friend has not called me back and I think the worst.
I've just wasted two days repeating work I've already done at one of the OE's, and I expect another 10 days worth of work for me and my coworkers to get a new engineer up to speed. This is one of the major downsides to downsizing, in that all the work done with a specific OE contact that is let go essentially has to be started again.
A European produced part that was being retooled for US production has been canceled. 6 very expensive tools sit 2/3 finished in China and will never make it to the US bound boat. Why? US supplier bankrupt and the dollar strength has negated much of the value of this exercise (at least relative to validating a new supplier and "new" capital costs that a "new" supplier might require). Now I'm listening to a director of purchasing at the OE tell me that he didn't write my tooling contracts, or in other words "go pound sand". I have a slightly different take of course, and as we are a "directed" source on three new programs I have a feeling our budget on those advanced programs might be getting fatter. This is a bullshit game, but no one wants to pay for mistakes. In this case, the company I work for already had the damn business for the original European produced parts, so we did all this work (and it was a tremendous amount of work) at NO CHARGE to the OE. So, we have a fundamental problem with doing this program gratis and then getting stuck with part of the cost. The OE knows they will pay somewhere, they just don't know where <g>
Chrysler releases for my one good program still showing zeros to March 29. I wonder when they are going to start building again, for I am carrying a ton of inventory.
Learned that one of my four competitors has let 150 production people go. I do not know the exact count at the one main plant, but that number is a significant percentage. I smell death over there, and judging from their erratic behavior (price increases, price reductions, multiple prices for the same product to different Tier One's), their huge parent company (you know their name) must be getting very impatient with their performance. I heard they offered buyouts to three of the top managers in December and all three took the offers. This was unexpected and created a void in experienced management at that level. I guess they were not watching Chrysler's buyout result very closely <g>
A very bright contact at Ford had an interesting comment last week. She said, "this time is different". I asked what she meant by that statement and she said, "these people will never be called back and everyone knows it, we are going to be much, much smaller before this is all over". Now this is not news to most here, but I find it interesting that there is awareness and a cultural shift at the worker bee level at Ford. Ford "gets" it, and I believe they will find a way to survive. I am still very undecided about what is going to happen with GM, I just know I can't get anything done over there.
GT
TH |
