Automotive Engineering - March 2023 - 2

EDITORIAL
EDITORIAL
Bill Visnic
Editorial Director
Bill.Visnic@sae.org
The Ford we didn't know
Ford CEO Jim Farley exposed significant
product-development lapses during
his company's fourth-quarter-2022
earnings call on February 2. Ford's 4Q
profit performance was no-excuses
dismal. Its causes, he stated, run deep.
So, in front of investors and media,
Farley boldly lifted Ford's PD skirt to
reveal alarming management and process
issues behind the dysfunction. The
fire had to be lit.
" We didn't know that our wiring harness
for Mach-E was 1.6 kilometers longer
than it needed to be, " Farley stated
on the call. " We didn't know it's 70
pounds heavier and that that's [worth]
$300 a battery. We didn't know that we
underinvested in braking technology to
save on the battery size. "
Credit to CNN's Chris
Isidore for roping these
EV-specific details into a
Feb. 3 story.
Later that day, I called
two Ford engineer friends
to see how their boss's
frankness was playing
among the technical staffs in Dearborn.
They'd been smarting from another
bomb: Ford's engineering ranks are at
least 25% overstaffed compared with
competitors, the CEO announced.
" Yeah, his observations were humbling
How did Mach-E
get released
with a harness
that's a mile
too long?
development? Or were they called in
after launch to identify where Ford's new
EV needed to lose complexity, weight
and cost? I'd guess the latter scenario,
given the " we didn't know " admission.
As legendary statistician W. Edwards
Deming once told Ford's leadership, 85%
of all product-development issues related
to quality are related to management
decisions. Deming had been called
in to advise Ford in the early 1980s, during
a period where the company was
bleeding red ink. Ford chairman Don
Peterson faced pressures perhaps greater
than those Farley is facing today.
Peterson's solution was to establish the
now-famous " team " approach to design,
engineering and manufacturing that
spawned the best-selling
1986 Ford Taurus and
Mercury Sable. That
ground-breaking,
$3.25-billion vehicle program,
led by the late, great
engineer Lew Veraldi,
spearheaded a quality
" culture " at the Blue Oval.
Deming's influence and Veraldi's leadto
say the least, " one of my friends, a
10-year Ford veteran, said. " It's embarrassing.
But how did Mach-E get released
with a harness that's a mile too long? "
No OEM can afford oversights like that.
It's part of why Ford is getting killed with
warranty cost, another pal noted.
The most surprising words in Farley's
Mach-E revelations are, " We didn't know. "
Does that more accurately mean internal
communication failed? Surely the Mach-E
development team was aware of stateof-art
electrical architectures during the
program's design phase. Did Ford cut
back on its in-house competitive teardowns?
Were the major benchmarking
firms - A2MAC1, Caresoft, and Munro &
Assoc. - involved up-front in Mach-E
2 March 2023
ership - he was later promoted to head
advanced vehicle development - ushered
in statistical process control, initiated
Six Sigma management techniques
and applied Taguchi methods across
Ford's PD and manufacturing operations.
As the program embarked, Veraldi's
team naturally tore down and scrutinized
the Honda Accord and Toyota Camry
- the Tesla Model Ys of their era. But
they also dug into the BMW 5-Series,
seeking insight and inspiration outside
and above Taurus's targeted competitive
set. The result was a transformation -
reduced development time, lower costs,
fresh thinking - that made " Quality is
Job 1 " and " Ford " synonymous.
My engineer friends are confident
their company will learn from its current
state of confusion, and never again be
caught in a " we didn't know. " That's a
vow Lew Veraldi would heartily approve.
Lindsay Brooke, Editor-in-Chief
AUTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING
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Automotive Engineering - March 2023

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