Measured News

“Good news is hard to come by at Chrysler these days. Its sales have been tanking, and industry observers regularly chatter about whether Cerberus Capital made a worse mistake buying the automaker last year at the front end of a recession than Daimler-Benz did in 1999. But the influential Harbour Report produced by consulting firm Oliver Wyman, which annually tracks factory productivity, says Chrysler's restructuring under Daimler-Benz made its factories as efficient as those of industry leader Toyota.

“Those two companies hold a marginal lead over General Motors and Ford, as well as Honda, Nissan, and Hyundai. In fact, the chief author of the study, Ron Harbour, says: ‘There is near parity among the top three American and top three Japanese automakers.’ He notes that Detroit's improvement has been staggering and stands in stark contrast to the 1990s, ‘when the Japanese beat Detroit in productivity two-to-one.’

“The year-over-year improvement by Chrysler, the best in the industry, couldn't be happening at a better time for the U.S. industry -- or Chrysler. ‘Sales are falling, and the shift to smaller cars is happening faster than the Detroit companies can adapt their manufacturing and downsize,’ says Harbour. ‘Can you imagine how much they'd be hurting if they hadn't been making these improvements?’

“Chrysler and Toyota take 30.37 human hours to produce a vehicle on average, across all manufacturing of vehicles and parts that go into them. GM takes 32.29 hours, and Ford takes 33.88 hours…

“With productivity gains tend to come increases in quality. As carmakers have focused on designing potential problems out of their vehicles from the first hour of computer-generated design and making assembly methods at factories simpler and more stress free, vehicle quality has risen.

“But there are exceptions. Harbour's top U.S. assembly plant for productivity is a Jeep plant in Toledo, Ohio, that manufactures the Jeep Wrangler. But this week, J.D. Power & Associates noted that Jeep had fallen to dead last in quality.”

(“U.S. Automakers See Surge In Efficiency.” businessweek.com. June 6, 2008)

HOW ARE WE DOING? Are we headed in the right direction? Are our strategies working? Are our executives doing a good job?

Is it stock price? profitability? sales growth? market share? productivity? reputation or image?

Yes, yes and yes; all of the above. But, who can move all the levers at once? How much can we expect from our leadership?

Balance... balancing once more and again...