My Years With General Motors by Alfred P Sloan & Jr

Author:Alfred P Sloan & Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: automobile, business, policy, management, 1900's, policy, Oldsmobile, Buick, Chevrolet, engines
Publisher: eNet Press Inc; Lake Oswego OR 97034 USA; www.enetpress.com
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The Annual Model Change

Annual car models are now such a natural and accepted part of American life that few persons, I would imagine, have thought about the vast effort of management that lies behind them. The procedure we follow in designing a typical American passenger car differs significantly from that followed for foreign cars and specially designed domestic cars.

Each year we must produce a line of cars which embodies advanced engineering and styling features, and which will be competitive in price and meet the demands of the retail customer. The cars in this line must have some common styling features, giving them all a “General Motors look”, but at the same time they must be clearly distinct from one another. They must also complement one another in price, which means that their own cost elements as well as the trend of competitive prices must be estimated well in advance of production.

In General Motors there are thousands of persons — in addition to production workers — involved in the creation of the new models: they include style artists and engineers; scientists; financial and marketing experts; members of the technical staffs of the various divisions; and the general executives and staff technicians of the corporation, not to mention our outside suppliers. The problem of coordinating their varied activities is extremely complex.

On the average about two years elapse between the time we make the first decisions on the new models and the time the cars appear in dealers’ showrooms. Ordinarily, the sequence of events during these two years is determined principally by the requirements of body production. Body changes, of course, are usually substantial from one year to the next, and the body work takes the most time. There are continual changes in chassis components, too, of course, but only occasionally in any one year do we introduce changes in all the chassis units — the frame, engine, transmission, front and rear suspensions.

To generalize broadly, the first year of the model development is devoted to laying out the basic engineering and styling characteristics of the new model; and the second year is devoted mainly to the engineering problems entailed in bringing the cars into full production. It is extremely difficult to get either of these jobs done in much less than a year’s time. If we compress the time given to setting the basic style concepts we increase the danger of “locking ourselves in” with a product which will not meet the approval of the retail customer. And if we compress the engineering-production time we pay extraordinary overtime charges, create inventory problems, and possibly delay the time when we can start production — which in turn might mean delays in a car’s announcement date and loss of sales.

On the other hand it would be unwise to lengthen the time taken to produce the new models. There is, of course, no reason in principle why we could not begin to plan our model changes three or even five years in advance — and,

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