Think Flat

by Ajai Vasudevan, Automotive Solutions Practice Leader

When we sat down for lunch that day, it wasn't exactly the initial topic of discussion. But given the pressures on the North America auto industry, it was only a matter of time before the topic came up.

"How do we enhance our product development capabilities while speeding time to market and reducing cost," asked the engineering director of a venerable Detroit based Automotive Tier-1 supplier. While this happened several days ago, the words are still ringing in my head.

This is obviously the holy grail of automotive product development.

Maybe a day will come when customers will design their own cars - like they today happily "assemble" IKEA furniture at home.

That will effectively take care of at least part of the problem. However till that day of product development nirvana comes, more mundane solutions need to be found. Mundane? Very well! 

The Product Development process remains one of the most complex automotive business processes. It is everything that automotive manufacturing is not. It is iterative, it branches out and congregates, it runs over an extended period of time. In short, it is quite different and hence requires a different approach. 

The rapidly flattening world is opening up new vistas to innovate the product development process. Take Toyota as an example. While common wisdom conveys that there is an outflow of engineering jobs from the US, Toyota is turning the logic upside down. Its Design center in Detroit is hiring locally and growing fast. Toyota and Honda are opening new plants in the US and recently Kia announced opening a new plant in the US as well. It is remarkable that organizations based in developed economies are opening an engineering center in another developed country. What’s attracting Toyota? Talent. Experienced engineers who have spent a lifetime in automotive product development.

Another route is to leverage the global talent pool. Thanks to availability of connectivity, workflow tools and product data management systems it is now possible for an extended global team to pretty much act as one. This opens up the route to tapping a lower cost talent pool, running an extra shift and allowing the core team to focus on innovation.  And, in the process, if the team comes up with new product ideas for the global markets. Now that’s a way to the holy grail!