Posted on 04/26/2024 12:48:44 PM PDT by Red Badger
A mechanical engineer with a zeal for quality, Petersen was only the second person outside the founding Ford family to lead the automaker.
Donald Petersen, a former chairman and CEO of Ford Motor Co. whose focus on quality, unbridled product design and a collaborative workplace helped the company recover and prosper during the mid- to late 1980s, has died. He was 97.
(Excerpt) Read more at autonews.com ...
It was a better world before bean counters started becoming CEOs.
It was Ford's best seller. Simple, ordinary car. Then the "consultants" and young Turks killed it. When they realized their mistake, they tried to sell a rebadged Volvo as a "Taurus". Nope. Nada. No one bought it: neither the car nor the hype.
Did Toyota ever kill the Camry? No. They still make it, and it is as successful as ever.
Rest In Peace, Don.
At Ford, Peterson brought in Edward Demming to re-teach what American business used to know about production quality.
What a concept. Well, America doesn't need his kind any more!! Our captains of industry today are all people who Didn't Earn It.
Third Generation Taurus was a flop, and lost the best selling car title to the Camry.
A major factor was the goofy oval styling. Failing from styling is ridiculous given how important the market research and potential buyer reaction is to the design of these cars.
They do endless amounts of buyer clinics, buyer focus groups, potential customer surveys, dealer clinics, competitor comparisons... and all the rest of it.
And they make major changes to the cars based on that research.
Maybe they need some “quality control” on market research and buyer preferences and consumer reaction.
BTTT
I worked at Ford during his Administration on the Taurus Program as a Manufacturing Engineering Manager. Great Leader.
Very cool. Thanks for sharing that. I used to drive one of your cars, lol. Smart man. I've always admired Petersen. He "got it". I'm also a great admirer of Edwards Demming. I worked in the aerospace industry when people still cared. I saw the TQM policies in action and helped implement the program.
However, it depends on a workforce that gives and damn, and is proud of their work. No one signs off on anything until they are satisfied it's 100% right. Don't rely on inspectors—YOU ARE THE INSPECTOR!
TQM doesn't work if the employees bring an ingrained adversarial attitude to the job. The unions instill that altitude and once it is set, you can't train people out of it. That's why many of the manufacturing plants in the South do better. The workforce isn't poisoned by a zeitgeist that management is out to screw them.
It's a cancer that has almost destroyed Boeing also. The Harvard MBA school of management infests them to the point that the bosses almost don't know that they're actually supposed to be building airplanes, just that they're supposed to cut costs to the bone. The latest CEO is stepping down because of their recent screwups and it doesn't appear they've learned anything. Their top candidate to replace him is their female chief operating officer with a bachelor's in accounting and a MBA, not a hint of engineering experience in her 30 year career. I doubt she knows which end of an airplane points into the wind but somehow she's supposed to fix an airplane company.
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