http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7478615/

DETROIT - General Motors Corp. executive Bob Lutz said Tuesday that U.S. automakers could streamline their design process if American engineers were trained more like their Asian and European counterparts. "We are actually training our engineers to be managers while the rest of the world trains them to be doers," Lutz said during a speech at the annual conference of the Society of Automotive Engineers in Detroit. GM announced last week that Lutz was stepping down as GM's North American chairman to focus full-time on global product development.

Lutz said Asian and European engineers are trained in drafting and can draw a new design on the spot when they run into problems. U.S. engineers often need to call in designers to do the drawing and may take weeks to figure out a solution, he said.
"It's somewhat bureaucratized, and it's a slow process," Lutz said. "It's because we don't have the bone-deep understanding of what's in there and the ability to draw and model without pulling in a bunch of specialists."

Lutz said fewer youngsters grow up working on cars and playing with Erector sets, which give them the intuition they can't get from computers or mathematical models.

He also said that engineers also will be helped by the company's new global focus. For too long, he said, GM's geographic divisions have been run as entirely separate operations. Last week's management shuffle was part of the new focus, Lutz said.

Lutz said GM's new mid-size Epsilon platform, which is being developed by a global team, is another part of the strategy. The platform will be used for different vehicles around the world.

"We can no longer afford to do engineering and design several times over around the world," Lutz said.

Lutz knows what the problems are, but can he do anything to change this ineffective culture that is present at GM before its too late.

 

You know something, he makes a valid point.

 

First, blame the UAW... then, blame the engineers... will anything be left by the time the executives and product planners get the blame they deserve?

 

Yeah right! I can think of more than 1 engineer, that I have known, that couldn't actually DO anything. Usaully they ended up screwing things up, and taking credit from the pee-on who's ideas actually fixed some problems. Before I get flamed, let me say I'm sure that's not true of ALL engineers, but it does seem to me as well ol' Lutzy's makes a very good point!

 

Ill second that SCNGENNFTHGEN, I work in the space industry, and ill say that about 60% of the engineers I know here can’t actually do any hands on work, they depend on us techs to build things for them. But when the time comes they take all the glory.

 

Of course, maybe the reason that GM engineers don't do any hard core engineering is that GM sent most of it's hard core engineering to suppliers (both here and abroad) years ago...

 

And the rest get hired off to the competition. Id love to see results of a survey of Toyonda engineers about where their first engineering job with an automaker was...

 

Thanks NC! Ain't it grand. I try to tell most of the kids I meet still going through school, to bust your *** now, get the most degrees you can so you can make all the $$$, and you don't have to work so hard later in life. Its kind of our system. The more $$$ you make, the less you have to actually do.

 

the other interesting part of it is specialisation of engineering and design resources.

in my experience, the US-bred guys get channeled into one area of engineering, say suspension or gearbox, and many of them stay there for life.

design is the same. plenty of thirty year old designers from the US have never done anything other than bumper caps or tail lights. the second car Max Wolff had design input into was the VY Commodore, which he was in charge of at far younger than that.

the guys who work for holden and ford out here get heaps of hands on experience across the spectrum of the car. by the time they're in their most productive years in the business, they've got a feel for everything in the car and how best to compromise to make it all work together at reasonable cost.

i guess that's a small-team benefit.

it's true that we may end up with a car that's not going to be as good as one designed by specialists in their respective areas, but we get 90 percent of the best possible car for 60 percent of the cost... and faster, more flexible engineers and designers.

there must be a reason why the Wolffs, Simcoes, Arcadipanes etc are in demand as well.

 

Very true!

It also dosn't help that the continuous cost cutting and head count reductions force engineers to take on more work from other parts of the organization. It is staggering how much time most engineers are forced to spend on non-engineering work.

 

Bingo! How is the design engineer going to do any REAL design work when either they spend 3/9 of their day doing quality paperwork or 5/9 of their day having meetings? Also, they don't have the experience because they aren't allowed to. Take DCX for example. They have UNION DESIGNERS. Just try logging onto a Catia workstation in Auburn Hills...

 

Actually, "design engineers" work. It's a far better situation than what GM had just a while back with "design release engineers"... which really meant "paper pusher" who knew little if anything about what they were "engineering"... generally just enough to really slow things down and mess them up.

GM actually does have very strong engineering groups - Metal Fabricating Division and Powertrain spring to mind immediatly. The Powertrain group is probably the strongest of it's type on the planet and the product shows that.

A fundamental GM weakness is that they have approached having engineers in other areas as commodities. Much like lug nuts. One lug nut is as good as another, right?

Well... what if you don't need a lug nut and you really need a self-tapping bolt?

Well then, you're screwed. Heh.

And that's what has happened. The best and brightest engineers in the other areas of the company have left for greener pastures and other companies, or were smart enough to take an early retirement and then go work somewhere else and make even more money.

Given the latest round of cost slashing, the best and brightest of who's left is going to leave too - because they can... for more money... and a few more vacation days... etc... etc... etc...

I'm working with two pretty sharp Ford guys right now on a special assignment, and guess where they both came from?

Yep.

GM. GM trained them both pretty much right out of college, made them contract employees (i.e. they were treated worse than POW's) and then one day it dawned on them that they were marketable and bright and...

"SEEYALATERBYE"


Of the best folks I dealt with at GM recently on a regular basis, two come to mind. One was contract, and she was a great person to work with. I truly miss dealing with her. Honest, forthright, fair, intelligent - all around class act. The second was direct and she works as hard as anyone I have ever met. I hope GM never loses either of them, but they better hurry up and hire that contract gal, like now, or she would be silly to not start looking for greener (literally...) pastures... I know a half-dozen companies right now where she could name her price (in the mid/low $100,000's) and get it very easily.

 

FWIW, I am an engineer by trade. I however unlike most design engineers, I came up through the fabrication/construction side before getting into design. I feel this made me a better design engineer because I knew how things were going to be built and was able to design them accordingly. It gave me a leg up on my peers and I quickly rose through the ranks. Today I am a Project Manager, and most of my work has very little to do with my formal training as an engineer. However, it is what I learned on the fabrication/construction side that aids me in 50% of my work. Having comprehension of the design process helps me in the other 50%. While today I rely on design engineers to do the dirty work, in some ways I give them ideas they wouldn't have thought of, and usually its the fabrication/construction experience that gives me that insight.

I'm not sure how this applys in the auto industry, however I constantly see bad managers who were good design engineers, and good managers who have no clue about the engineering side, but think they do. The problem I see is upper management often assumes that because someone is a successful engineer, they'll make a good manager. That's not always the case. The other problem I see is for the most part many engineers stay stagnent, and don't try to learn new technologies, or different design philosophies than what they are already comfortable with. I believe its not what you already know, but that you are eager to learn new things that makes a good engineer. To do that you need to sometimes go outside your comfort zone. Most American engineers can't handle this. They're typically perfectionists that want to right all the time, only because they are uncomfortable with what they don't know. Foreign engineers don't typically have this problem. They love technology and are always eager to learn something new, and typically want to know more about things outside their expertise. Thusly why they may have a leg up on the US.

This of course is just my opinion and an observation from my personal perspective; but like I said, Lutz makes a valid point.

 

She better start looking, word it all GM contract employees are headed out the door. I'm seeing it on some of my launch teams...

 

You do have a valid point IMO...