Car Guys vs. Bean Counters - Bob Lutz [65]
Decisions, once the system was fully up and running in 2005, were made at the Global Product Development Council, on which all regions were equally represented. Final authority rested with Rick Wagoner and the monthly Automotive Strategy Board.
This is where I’d wanted us to go, but getting there wasn’t easy. Pleased with the success of the compact SUV program, we launched a global program for the next-generation midsize sedans, now finally on the market as the award-winning Opel Insignia, the Buick LaCrosse, and the Buick Regal, with more to come. Even though approved as global architectures in principle, they faced a jungle of regional approvals, questioning, rejection, redos, and more questioning. The problem was that global product development was, by acting globally, essentially spending capital and engineering resources that were still the budgeting responsibility of the regional president.
The number one machete wielder in all this was, once again, Jim Queen. Accepting the physical burden of more international air travel than any human should have to endure, he tirelessly met and negotiated with GM’s far-flung engineering teams, working to create a common language, common corrosion standards, common testing methods, and a common global engineering database and CAD system, in record time.Through persuasiveness, logic, persistence, and, when required, sheer strength of his impressive personality, he forged one functional global engineering entity out of four previously very distinct ones.
Once it was done, we could rest assured that cooling tests, durability tests, timing milestones, and everything else engineering organizations do were done one way. Much thought was devoted to how to engineer bodies, for that influenced stamping operations and assembly plants.
While Jim Queen devoted his entire time to the standardization of engineering, Gary Cowger was doing the analogous job for GM Manufacturing. Under uncontrolled regionalism, there was no set GM way to weld bodies, nor was there a process in paint, trim, and final assembly. We decided we needed what Cowger and I called “interbuildability,” the ability to take the design of any GM car from any region of the world and very quickly assemble it in any other region. (“Good luck, Bob,” Cowger told me. “This is like the tenth time somebody has wanted to do this at GM, but we never got it done.”) But that dream became reality with the successful build of the “next-generation Epsilon” (GM architectures were given Greek letters as code names) midsize cars, produced in Europe as an Opel/ Vauxhall, and in China and North America as a Buick. This was followed by the new Chevrolet Cruze. GM’s global compact became a huge commercial success on every continent and is assembled in GM plants in Korea, Australia, China, Europe, and the United States.This would have been unthinkable ten years ago.
Achieving “interbuildability” around the globe meant not only common engineering and design practices, but also common welding sequences, common methods, common measurements, and common tooling and equipment. A big task, but it got done.
The first really large global program, the “Epsilon” midsize car, was also the first to be assigned to a global vehicle line executive, whose authority and influence would transcend the region where he was based.
Global Epsilon was to replace, with one basic chassis, midsize sedans from Daewoo, Chevrolet, Pontiac, Buick, Opel/Vauxhall, and Saab. Given the spread of price range, some of the executions would be clearly nobler than others.This was achieved by designing various suspension systems of increasing sophistication, but which, as Cowger required for his global interbuildability plan, always bolted up to the underbody in exactly the same way. Whenever we talked about variants of the main theme, we became accustomed to hearing Gary say, “Do anything