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Although I applaud your skepticism, I think it's misplaced. My first job out of University was working for Daimler-Benz when they owned Chrysler. I was a front

Although I applaud your skepticism, I think it's misplaced. My first job out of University was working for Daimler-Benz when they owned Chrysler. I was a front line eng supervisor at the plant level focusing on In System Damage, Federal Torque and a host of other quality issues that were plaguing the company at the time. I dealt directly with it so I can tell you, Supply Chain is not that big a deal to fix. They will sort out their problems there, they just imo need a few vets from a traditional car company. As an aside, my time there was a hugely formative experience for me. Given a $500K budget and armed with nothing more than a little sql, I was able to immediately start saving the company multi-millions of dollars annually. I was considered a big star among the fresh batch of talent they inhaled that year, but I left because I could see the writing on the wall about the industry. Given the bailout and all that, I am pretty happy with that decision.

kilroy123 10y ago
I'm very curious how you were able to save the company millions of dollars.
- grizzles 10y ago
  It was an exercise in creative problem solving. I'd query the data to find out where on the line the most (costly x incidence) problems were occurring and then devise a solution. If a worker was scratching the paint every time he put his tool down the secure a fastener, we'd get a heavy rubber guard fabricated, change his man assignment and have him put down the guard before he did his little peice, or even better change the tool if that was possible. If you are curious, yes there were workers who would damage the vehicle every time and let it go to rework. Don't even get me started on labor. :)
  - dilemma 10y ago
    >Don't even get me started on labor. :) Wow.
    - softawre 10y ago
      Well, programmers do the same thing. Blah blah make better software blah blah world makes better idiots.
  - rblatz 10y ago
    Let me guess when asked why they said "that's how we've always done it"
    - grizzles 10y ago
      Haha, yep. That or a complaint about their man assignment changing and it being hard to keep up.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - alphapapa 10y ago
    How did they gather comprehensive data like that? Seems like you'd need an employee to watch every employee, recording everything they did.
    - grizzles 10y ago
      The line is Body Shop->Paint->Trim->Chassis->Final Vehicle. Final Vehicle is concerned with testing and certification and whatever other finishing touches need to be performed. It also operates the repair department, and the 'yard' with all the defect jobs. Our yard was so packed the company was renting new yards away from the factory. The repairmen who worked in the bays and yard were stone cold experts on the vehicles and they kept written logs. Those logs were typed up and put in the database by the office clerks. These were mostly signal. There were also networked terminals at some stations but not all down the line. Finding the root cause of an issue was basically like git-bisect. You knew where a part was added and where it ended up. So you just needed to narrow it down. For a high priority issue, I'd go do a visual inspection myself at the mid station before a part got covered by another part. Broken? Go to the mid station between here and start. Not broken, go the other way. We got stumped sometimes, but mostly we could narrow it down pretty fast. For the workers, it's impossible to lose your job so there isn't a care factor about covering up shoddy workmanship.
      - bobsil1 10y ago
        Binary search :)
- caio1982 10y ago
  My wife works in supply chain (top 5 cosmetics company in Brazil) as a senior analyst and she alone managed to save several million dollars in the last couple of years just by doing the right stuff with Microsoft Excel, the right stuff nobody was doing before she joined them. You would be surprised how amateurish big rich companies can seem sometimes.
Cookingboy 10y ago
>Supply Chain is not that big a deal to fix. They will sort out there problems there, they just imo need a few vets from a traditional car company. Tesla have been trying to and they are still running into many problems, many industry veteran hires and tens of thousands of cars sold later. I have talked to many people who have worked/work in production as well, and unfortunately they don't share with you the same optimism on how easy it is to scale up supply chain for a large scale luxury auto company. Daimler-Benz has had major reliability problems with both Chrysler and Mercedes and it took Mercedes over a decade to get back to industry average, while Chrysler is still in the gutters.
- grizzles 10y ago
  It's because of the fast pace of the company. I doubt they are any worse than any other company introducing a new model. As a new model recedes into the past quality issues should decrease linearly, and maybe faster. Alot of the BSR issues (often caused by worker inaccuracy) that Tesla faces today are probably catchable nowadays with a convnet before they even go down the line. If I had to guess right now, many years after leaving I would guess that Chrysler will eternally be a fail, it's culture is just wrong at every level. Tesla isn't hamstrung by that, or the UAW either (yet).
  - Cookingboy 10y ago
    "I doubt they are any worse than any other company introducing a new model." Except they are. The Model S is 5 years old (even the refresh model is a year old) and they are still running into parts and build issues. It has improved a long way but during the whole process they had to cut the number of interior and exterior colors/trims just to streamline the production. Other manufacturers introduces new fit/finish and trim options along a model's life span and Tesla does the opposite. Case in point, the original P85+ came with sports trims inside (such as the red piping on the leather seats) and some unique fit and finishes, with unique sports suspensions and chassis tuning. But later on they eliminated all of those and now a top of the line P100D have the exact interior trim and chassis tuning as the cheapest S60 that cost less than half as much, all for the sake of streamlined production. And even then they can't find parts for when cars need service or are in an accident.
karpodiem 10y ago
I'd like to know what vehicle programs you were on at DMX during that time, because other than WK1, L cars were a mess, and now that I think about it, nearly every other DMX B/C segment program I was involved with was a mess with respect to quality too. fyi, I cut my teeth on WK1 and WK2. I love JNAP, and Jeep - I found a home there.
- grizzles 10y ago
  Nice to hear. I worked on B/AB, D. My impression was that everything seemed to be a mess, but especially management. My direct supervisor (an area manager) wanted me to fudge the numbers and lie to his boss (a center manager). By then, I'd had enough and left.
SpaceRaccoon 10y ago
What did you do save them money?
mikekchar 10y ago
> Supply Chain is not that big a deal to fix This is kind of irrelevant, but somewhat amusing, so I figure I'll tell it. My neighbour (in the middle of nowhere in rural Japan) was some kind of automotive manufacturing expert before he retired. I don't even know his name (he tells me to call him "Tom"), but we go out drinking occasionally. He must have been a big wig because he spent a considerable amount of time in the US and even has a personally signed thank you card from George Bush Sr. Anyway, we were at the bar and I was telling him about the use of kanban in software development. My wife interrupted and asked what kanban was (because in Japanese "kanban" just means "signboard"). I tried to explain the concept, but she remained confused. He said, "I can explain it very easily". He picked up an empty plate and handed it to my wife. "We're out of fish", he said, motioning to the bar. :-)
- adwn 10y ago
  > "We're out of fish", he said, motioning to the bar. :-) I don't get it.
  - allengeorge 10y ago
    I assume it means that the act of _sourcing_ something at the time it's needed is a much harder problem than it appears; simply because a source exists does not mean that it's the right source, or that it's even stocked.
  - the-dude 10y ago
    JIT
  - mikekchar 10y ago
    We had an empty plate. We send that plate back to the bar. The sushi chef slices fish and puts it on the plate. If he goes below a certain amount of tuna, then he sends an empty tuna container to the sous chef. The sous chef takes tuna from the refrigerator and puts it in the container. If the refrigerator goes below a certain amount of tuna, the manager writes a note and puts it in an envelope for the fish monger. The fish monger gets the note and sends more tuna. If the fish monger goes below a certain amount of tuna, he sends a note to his agent at the fish auction. The agent at the fish auction buys a tuna and sends it to the fish monger. When the tuna at the auction is all sold, the fishermen bring more from their boats. When the boats are empty, the fishermen go out to sea to catch more tuna. Only, we've caught almost all the tuna in the ocean, so please make sure to ask for something else at the bar. Edit: Just to be clear, that was not Tom's point. His point was that the plate was empty, so by simply noticing it is empty, we can ask for more fish which "pulls" all the activity that ends up producing fish on our plate. In a kanban system, you only really need to worry about how much inventory you want to carry at each station and the connection to the previous station.

kilroy123 10y ago

I'm very curious how you were able to save the company millions of dollars.

grizzles 10y ago
It was an exercise in creative problem solving. I'd query the data to find out where on the line the most (costly x incidence) problems were occurring and then devise a solution. If a worker was scratching the paint every time he put his tool down the secure a fastener, we'd get a heavy rubber guard fabricated, change his man assignment and have him put down the guard before he did his little peice, or even better change the tool if that was possible. If you are curious, yes there were workers who would damage the vehicle every time and let it go to rework. Don't even get me started on labor. :)
- dilemma 10y ago
  >Don't even get me started on labor. :) Wow.
  - softawre 10y ago
    Well, programmers do the same thing. Blah blah make better software blah blah world makes better idiots.
- rblatz 10y ago
  Let me guess when asked why they said "that's how we've always done it"
  - grizzles 10y ago
    Haha, yep. That or a complaint about their man assignment changing and it being hard to keep up.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- alphapapa 10y ago
  How did they gather comprehensive data like that? Seems like you'd need an employee to watch every employee, recording everything they did.
  - grizzles 10y ago
    The line is Body Shop->Paint->Trim->Chassis->Final Vehicle. Final Vehicle is concerned with testing and certification and whatever other finishing touches need to be performed. It also operates the repair department, and the 'yard' with all the defect jobs. Our yard was so packed the company was renting new yards away from the factory. The repairmen who worked in the bays and yard were stone cold experts on the vehicles and they kept written logs. Those logs were typed up and put in the database by the office clerks. These were mostly signal. There were also networked terminals at some stations but not all down the line. Finding the root cause of an issue was basically like git-bisect. You knew where a part was added and where it ended up. So you just needed to narrow it down. For a high priority issue, I'd go do a visual inspection myself at the mid station before a part got covered by another part. Broken? Go to the mid station between here and start. Not broken, go the other way. We got stumped sometimes, but mostly we could narrow it down pretty fast. For the workers, it's impossible to lose your job so there isn't a care factor about covering up shoddy workmanship.
    - bobsil1 10y ago
      Binary search :)
caio1982 10y ago
My wife works in supply chain (top 5 cosmetics company in Brazil) as a senior analyst and she alone managed to save several million dollars in the last couple of years just by doing the right stuff with Microsoft Excel, the right stuff nobody was doing before she joined them. You would be surprised how amateurish big rich companies can seem sometimes.

Cookingboy 10y ago

>Supply Chain is not that big a deal to fix. They will sort out there problems there, they just imo need a few vets from a traditional car company. Tesla have been trying to and they are still running into many problems, many industry veteran hires and tens of thousands of cars sold later. I have talked to many people who have worked/work in production as well, and unfortunately they don't share with you the same optimism on how easy it is to scale up supply chain for a large scale luxury auto company. Daimler-Benz has had major reliability problems with both Chrysler and Mercedes and it took Mercedes over a decade to get back to industry average, while Chrysler is still in the gutters.

grizzles 10y ago
It's because of the fast pace of the company. I doubt they are any worse than any other company introducing a new model. As a new model recedes into the past quality issues should decrease linearly, and maybe faster. Alot of the BSR issues (often caused by worker inaccuracy) that Tesla faces today are probably catchable nowadays with a convnet before they even go down the line. If I had to guess right now, many years after leaving I would guess that Chrysler will eternally be a fail, it's culture is just wrong at every level. Tesla isn't hamstrung by that, or the UAW either (yet).
- Cookingboy 10y ago
  "I doubt they are any worse than any other company introducing a new model." Except they are. The Model S is 5 years old (even the refresh model is a year old) and they are still running into parts and build issues. It has improved a long way but during the whole process they had to cut the number of interior and exterior colors/trims just to streamline the production. Other manufacturers introduces new fit/finish and trim options along a model's life span and Tesla does the opposite. Case in point, the original P85+ came with sports trims inside (such as the red piping on the leather seats) and some unique fit and finishes, with unique sports suspensions and chassis tuning. But later on they eliminated all of those and now a top of the line P100D have the exact interior trim and chassis tuning as the cheapest S60 that cost less than half as much, all for the sake of streamlined production. And even then they can't find parts for when cars need service or are in an accident.

karpodiem 10y ago

I'd like to know what vehicle programs you were on at DMX during that time, because other than WK1, L cars were a mess, and now that I think about it, nearly every other DMX B/C segment program I was involved with was a mess with respect to quality too. fyi, I cut my teeth on WK1 and WK2. I love JNAP, and Jeep - I found a home there.

grizzles 10y ago
Nice to hear. I worked on B/AB, D. My impression was that everything seemed to be a mess, but especially management. My direct supervisor (an area manager) wanted me to fudge the numbers and lie to his boss (a center manager). By then, I'd had enough and left.

SpaceRaccoon 10y ago

What did you do save them money?

mikekchar 10y ago

> Supply Chain is not that big a deal to fix This is kind of irrelevant, but somewhat amusing, so I figure I'll tell it. My neighbour (in the middle of nowhere in rural Japan) was some kind of automotive manufacturing expert before he retired. I don't even know his name (he tells me to call him "Tom"), but we go out drinking occasionally. He must have been a big wig because he spent a considerable amount of time in the US and even has a personally signed thank you card from George Bush Sr. Anyway, we were at the bar and I was telling him about the use of kanban in software development. My wife interrupted and asked what kanban was (because in Japanese "kanban" just means "signboard"). I tried to explain the concept, but she remained confused. He said, "I can explain it very easily". He picked up an empty plate and handed it to my wife. "We're out of fish", he said, motioning to the bar. :-)

adwn 10y ago
> "We're out of fish", he said, motioning to the bar. :-) I don't get it.
- allengeorge 10y ago
  I assume it means that the act of _sourcing_ something at the time it's needed is a much harder problem than it appears; simply because a source exists does not mean that it's the right source, or that it's even stocked.
- the-dude 10y ago
  JIT
- mikekchar 10y ago
  We had an empty plate. We send that plate back to the bar. The sushi chef slices fish and puts it on the plate. If he goes below a certain amount of tuna, then he sends an empty tuna container to the sous chef. The sous chef takes tuna from the refrigerator and puts it in the container. If the refrigerator goes below a certain amount of tuna, the manager writes a note and puts it in an envelope for the fish monger. The fish monger gets the note and sends more tuna. If the fish monger goes below a certain amount of tuna, he sends a note to his agent at the fish auction. The agent at the fish auction buys a tuna and sends it to the fish monger. When the tuna at the auction is all sold, the fishermen bring more from their boats. When the boats are empty, the fishermen go out to sea to catch more tuna. Only, we've caught almost all the tuna in the ocean, so please make sure to ask for something else at the bar. Edit: Just to be clear, that was not Tom's point. His point was that the plate was empty, so by simply noticing it is empty, we can ask for more fish which "pulls" all the activity that ends up producing fish on our plate. In a kanban system, you only really need to worry about how much inventory you want to carry at each station and the connection to the previous station.