I heard that PD has mandated quality classes for all employees. Is this true?
I retired 2 years ago and believe the root cause of all the companies quality issues is the reduction in prototypes (under Hackett) for development testing, too much reliance on CAE and cost cutting after production.
Comments?
CAE works fine when you have folks who know what its limitations and capabilities are. Far too often folks don't understand what can or cannot be modeled, the boundary conditions or even doing a real world test to correlate whether the CAE model is representative of what is being seen on the part or the system. The managers don't know any better either. Quality needs a mindset of being data driven, asking the right questions and seeking answers to those questions.
No tool or training will provide the mindset, it's culture, discipline and a sharp customer focus or ensuring they don't do DV/PV for us.
Chassis guy here. Not a fan of CAE whatsoever.
“One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions.”
― Wernher Von Braun
1ivr there is an illusion that all employees are taking the quality training classes. In the long standing tradition one of the low status GSR took the training and then serially used the credentials of the rest of the team including the LL5 to take the training and obtain certificates for each. The class list was apparently different for the LL5.
No doubt there are some nuggets in the training. But let’s face it management covers up / distorts the messaging from below regarding quality concerns. Which leads to people not bothering to raise concerns. People figure why speak up when that invariably leads to blowback up to and including expulsion? Seriously how many I Spy The Lie have you seen in the Ford Press? One wonders at what level did each of those lies originate? GSR? LL6? LL5? LL4? LL3? LL2?
It has nothing to do with supplier quality or the replacement of prototype tests by poorly correlating simulations - sometimes even based on Excel - no it is about the equal amount of online quality training classes for everyone, the D&R engineer, the Site Manager and HPC IT-guy. If a week of training does not help to bring the number of recalls down punish these feckless cubicle dwellers with a training month. Toyota will finally begrudge us for our efficient way of dealing with recalls. They should have never let Farley go.
True. All Ford employees are required to take about 25-30 hours of various training courses. Some I found were very helpful, others were just OK. I don’t believe it’s a waste of time. There is always something to learn. The issue is if you don’t use the knowledge you obtained from these courses as part of your daily work then it’ll easily be forgotten.
If it replaces DEI training then I am for it.
Not Ford, but instead Stellantis, and I can tell you they push phases faster than a ho--y teen primed and ready to go with multiple partners. Before prototype is completed and ready to be tested, it's on to the next phase and that order sidelined - bought and paid for prior to discard. That's how they do it, no mock up, just move at the speed of lightning. And it works. It works so well, that people buy Jeeps and Rams left and right. It pays too well not to move fast, errors, warranty, recalls be darned. Some companies get lucky, or they just get it right. Others, not so much.
And yes, these stupid effing classes get in the way of real work. I don't have the time to learn something I never intend to use. BUT, BUT, BUT, with some corporations, if you don't take the class, they shut off your login systems ID, relevant or not until you pass them. Bunch of BS. I could say more, so I'll leave it with..... It's a clustereff.
They went about this mandatory training in the wrong way. If you haven't taken the class in the last couple of years, you have to retake it. Even if you have 20+ years of experience - guess what? You are taking the class. Ain't got time for that. The other problem I have is that the training is across the board in PD. Making Program Management folks take 8 hours of FMA training is ridiculous - it has nothing to do with their core responsibilities and they will never put that training into practice. Also, are they making all the agency / PS folks take the 30 hours of training?
How about “mandatory” spelling class
What happened to FTEPs at Fairlane Training?? Those were the days!
Bottom line, these classes are a futile attempt to teach common sense to those that have ZERO chance of ever having it. Give me an FCG with a 3.3 GPA with grease under their finger nails than a university XYZ grad with a PhD.
This training is going to get in the way with my daily home improvement work
Reasons lack of design quality are multiple: not having time to engineer, insufficient D&R experience, lack of process discipline, studio & marketing having too much control in content/complexity, managers who lack deep rooted technical expertise and are not accountable. In my 22 years at Ford, I'd only seen a handful of 5D's/8D's/6-Sigma projects which were truly well done. There is no incentive for those folks who put their head down and deliver, they get buried in the back room. Not all of them are management material, but recognizing and fostering their technical expertise with better salaries and opportunities to advance would be a nice start. Now every yahoo is an HTHD or "critical" skill. All of this is directly related to poor management.
Ford has no mentoring for its younger engineers. Youngsters are put on high profile programs and high impact systems with hardly a few years under their belt. They complete the program and move on, there is no cradle to grave ownership and learning from one's mistakes. Prevent recurrences are hardly ever well written and complete.
Past performance should be the basis for rewarding engineers, and even program CNE's, high profile programs. You start learning on a MCA/OPD program, not on a SuperDuty or F150. Was the Lightning a success? That CNE is now an LL2. How about the Explore CNE, who is now an LL2. A lot folks like that get the name and credit for work done by others and now move on to higher positions. What has new quality done?
Ford values style over substance. It is a very clique based company, know the right people and you will get opportunities.
It won't make any difference period, except to develop new buzz words to toss around.
The problem with that sort of mandate is that the vast majority cram to get through all the classes by an arbitrary deadline, but unless they apply the techniques in their actual jobs, it's too easy to forget the material. I wouldn't bet that it will make much difference 2 or 3 years down the road.
Yup! 30 or so classes/modules to bang out by the end of the year.