Word: designations
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...lines at both a Detroit Three and a Toyota plant, says the problem worsened over the years as products and manufacturing inevitably got more sophisticated. Merely upgrading a Toyota, he says, requires 300 man-years of engineering. No single manager can ever understand it. "Figuring out products, markets, customers, designs, systems - what's inherent about anything complex is that it becomes impossible. You can't design it perfectly," he says. What matters, he argues, is swarming problems from every direction to create high-speed, low-cost discovery and learning. And when you extend that open approach to suppliers, the path...
...stemming from that original control freak, Henry Ford. At GM, a management hierarchy that had been created by GM's master planner, Alfred P. Sloan, in the '20s - GM's first and most successful restructuring - was still functioning in the '80s. Management's job was to create the products, design the production system and provide solutions if there were problems. Everyone else followed orders...
...halfway restructurings was steep. In 1985, GM aped Japan's practice of building global cars - the idea was to share chassis and parts across brands, a strategy that made sense at the engineering level. At the consumer level, it was a disaster. Internal clashes for control removed imagination from design, resulting in look-alike Buicks, Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs. Sales declined; cue another restructuring. The Germans, who have their own auto culture, were no match for Chrysler after they bought the company in 1998. No wonder they gave it back...
...there were the occasional hits that demonstrated Detroit's deep pedigree in engineering and design. Chrysler, desperately surviving on a government-guaranteed loan, created the minivan in 1984. That same year, it launched the first modern sport-utility vehicle, the Jeep Cherokee. Throughout it all, Detroit kept its dominance of the hugely important pickup-truck market - and does so to this...
Tiffany Style (Abrams) A history of the iconic jeweler by the company's design director, John Loring, reflecting on everything from jewels and fine china to Super Bowl trophies and yachts...