Thread regarding Ford layoffs

Separation packages are currently offered in Europe for several thousand employees. So some of this cost may account for these voluntary separations.

Many good comments in this thread.

@udx+1mvjVCIb/@cqq+1mvjVCIb I was asked last year to document one of the systems I manage technically. The same system that I have talked managers about replacing it with a cheaper and better option for the last 2 years.

This request for documentation was kind of understandable, since last year the company reduced our team, and I am the only one that knows inside out about the system. I did deliver the document, but I left out, on purpose, a couple of critical steps. Of course, nobody realized it, since I am the only around that knows the system.

Not if, but when I am kicked out to the curb, the company will be forced to implement the better solution that I proposed so many times. I don't harbor bad feelings to the company. Yes, the company have changed for the worse. Yes, there are many hypocrite two faces credit stealing lying weasels in here, and many managers, starting at the very top, that should not be there. However, I have known many capable and good people in my years in the company.

BTW, I won't buy any Ford with quality issues, and those will happen until they hire the right personnel and bring the jobs back to America. In the meantime, the company can archive my plan PINs, since I am not going to give these away to my family.

I wander if these comments about not trainable include Jim Farley whose track record of accomplishments is like a empty shelve.

1. We lost market share since he hired in.
2. we left nearly all of the car segments in NA except Mustang.
3. Complexity out of control.
4. Know as two Jim. Tells the press one thing then states a different story in Town halls. Simple A Liar.

Again he has been here as a Group VP since 09. Has the gall to blame everyone but himself. Not an example of leadership. Will go down as a business' case of what not to do as a CEO.

Bill Ford another one

1. Ran the company between 01-06 Fired by his own family in the spring of 06. Otherwise the other family members were going to dump their stock. Upside Alan was hired. That is public record in local papers.
2. Train Station. Company will dump nearly $3/4 bn into what is it project. Example of someone trying to leave a legacy.
3. Numerous companies purchased that all failed.

So if change is required. It starts at the Top. A name on the side of the building is not a qualification. That was stated in the WS Journal two months ago.

I’ve never heard of a ceo dog out the salary rank and file in the media or in town halls. Something is not right. Who would want to accept a job when the company upper management looks down on the current staff and literally call them unqualified? I guess the dei candidates are unqualified is included as well.

The Ford Circle Jerk played out repeatedly

• We want to eliminate (insert current flavor here). Let us say 85% US work force
• Senior leadership cascade to lower management - document everything XYZ does and capture all XYZ’s knowledge.
• Middle management, we won’t meet our other objectives if we do that, assign some of the mouth breathers the task of writing all the process documentation
• Useless process and knowledge documents are created and published
• Replacement teams review the useless documentation and say OMG your current staff are all unskilled id--ts. This information is pushed upwards to the CEO
• The CEO publicly states that his current staff is unskilled and can’t be trained, therefore he needs to hire replacement workers who are coincidentally located in lower cost countries.

Yes JF told everyone that 85% of the US salaried workforce would be moved to low cost countries. Why don’t people believe that is still the plan? Groups have been told their #1 priority is to document all their processes and knowledge in Knowledge-Bases. Of course they are told it is so we can improve quality. But anyone paying attention knows the Knowledge-Bases are being studied by the stealth replacement teams in India and Mexico. When their leaders give the thumbs up signal, the US teams will be cut.

It won’t go well, just as the Boston Consulting Group plan of eliminating the highest paid (highest skilled) did not go well.
The rub is the age old problem of “you don’t know what you don’t know”. The Knowledge-Bases do not contain the wisdom and skills learned over a life-time by the highly competent and effective professionals. The unskilled / wet-behind-their-ears will repeat all the mistakes that the highly competent made early in their careers / were stopped from making by a mentor.

This is why a 120 year old manufacturing company can’t launch a quality vehicle. The cumulative manufacturing knowledge is not maintained and built upon. That simply has not been a priority for Ford leadership in modern times.

Oh and those Knowledge-Bases they are being populated by the least skilled in our area. The entries are comical. They contain equal portions of myth, voodoo and basic instructions copied from out-of-date manuals. You see the LL6 need the skilled to the work that is running the business. But watch and see, the skilled will be ushered to the door.

To OP - read much?

Of course that is what it means ; the article quotes a source from Ford and mentions where the actions are going to take place.

This is the only problem with the article; they make it seem like it is all about Europe and South American, but I bet anyone here a steak dinner that some of those restructuring funds end up getting allocated to the USA as well.

Layoffs should be recognized as a part of life going forward. Blue and white collar employees stay employed only as long a management deems it necessary. This is across all industries, not just at Ford. Ford mismanagement will only guarantee cuts are part of the future. In addition to saving "money" as part of directed cuts to eliminate US jobs.

Probably. I asked my LL2 a few months ago and he wouldn't deny it.