GM revs up design system
Lutz orders streamlining to get best cars out faster
January 25, 2002
General Motors Corp. is preparing to radically revamp the way it designs new cars and trucks to get better-looking and hotter-selling models to showrooms faster, sources at the carmaker said Thursday.
The effort to streamline GM's cumbersome design process is being led by Vice Chairman Robert Lutz, who was hired last summer to revive the automaker's tired car lineup and help reverse a 20-year decline in its share of the American car and truck market.
The new system will work more like the so-called platform teams Lutz helped create in the 1990s when he was the president of Chrysler Corp., which resulted in innovative vehicles that scored with consumers and critics.
GM spokesman Tom Kowaleski said Thursday that the automaker has finished an internal review of its design process that Lutz initiated in December. He declined to disclose the results of that study.
Lutz has said he's well aware that critics find GM's process bureaucratic and "sloth-like." He has also questioned the brand management philosophy of former North American chief Ron Zarrella, and is expected to free GM designers to come up with exciting products without having to kowtow to consumer research that can compromise creativity.
In a recent interview, Lutz acknowledged his reputation as being a foe of market research. He emphasized that studying consumers' psyches has its place, but is no replacement for gut instinct.
"I'm only against using" consumers "to sift through data and do research-driven product," Lutz said. "That will get you a very bland, one-size-fits-all design."
Sources say the changes could be announced late next week, but that parts of the new design system are still being worked on. Elements of the plan could require approval by the Board of Directors, which is not scheduled to meet until the first week in February.
"We don't have anything to announce, and we won't for a number of days," Kowaleski said.
Reuters reported that as many as 400 jobs could be eliminated by the new organization. A source told the Free Press that it would reduce the number of vehicle line executives, who wield enormous power over the design and production of car and truck models. GM's brand managers, designers and engineers report to the Vehicle Line Executives, who guide projects from sketch to showroom.
But Kowaleski said that would be "pure speculation" at this point.
As an example of how the new process might unshackle designers, GM rolled out the Pontiac Solstice 2-seat convertible at the Detroit auto show this year. The Solstice went from a design sketch off contest to a rolling model in less than four months.
Lutz has said more products would begin with design competitions among three teams, including independent designers outside GM.
"We'll research those three, select the winner, hone it, and adapt things off of some of the other themes," Lutz told Wall Street analysts Jan. 10.
GM officials described the current vehicle production process as excessively long, with designers and engineers duplicating efforts as a car or truck moves from concept to production. The complicated process also makes it practically impossible to make late changes to a vehicle's design, they added.
"Our process has been so sequential that by the time we've gotten a final product into the product clinics and found out it's not doing so well, it was really too late to change," Lutz told the analysts.
Lutz's expertise and reputation as the ultimate car expert led to his hiring at GM in August. Since arriving at GM, the 69-year old Lutz has spent $1,500 to print 3,000 "Sez Who?" stickers for use whenever he is confronted by GM's sometimes confusing bureaucracy.
Reuters reported that GM's new product-development process will scrap several existing groups. Gone will be the Advanced Portfolio Exploration (APEX) center, a small number of designers and analysts who track societal trends to develop new and sometimes outlandish ideas for transportation.
Currently, seven brand character centers design cars and trucks for each division, such as Chevrolet, Cadillac and Buick.
The individual brand character centers were championed by current design chief Wayne Cherry, who viewed them as a means to forge distinct consumer images for Chevrolet, Buick and other divisions.
The new system will elevate the importance of designers while de-emphasizing brand managers, reversing the controversial position put in place by former GM Chairman and Procter & Gamble executive John Smale in the 1990s to give lineups a distinct image.
A GM source familiar with design confirmed changes were afoot, but said it would be surprising to see the brand character centers abolished.
"I think we'll find a happy middle ground between the brand approach and the product people," the source said.
Critics said Smale's brand-management philosophy wasted millions of dollars on advertising for individual vehicles rather than a division such as Chevrolet, and gave too much power to marketing executives who knew little about cars.
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