Research Restructuring and Assessment Can We Apply the Corporate Experience to Government Agencies? (1995) / Chapter Skim
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4 Research Restructuring and Assessment at Ford
4 Research Restructuring and Assessment at Ford
Pages 27-35
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From page 27... ...
The period from the founding of the company until World War II had two primary characteristics. The first was a relentless attempt to decrease manufacturing costs and design costs, sometimes with good methods and sometimes with bad.
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From page 28... ...
A central corporate research committee was set up, chaired by Lee Iacocca by the way who has been president of the company and chief financial officer, the head of manufacturing, the head of engineering, the head of product development, and the head of what is called technical affairs to try to decide what to do, particularly in terms of research. One objective, obviously, was to cut costs.
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From page 29... ...
Instead of being Ford of Europe product development, Ford of the United States product development, Ford of Australia product development, et cetera, there is one product development organization worldwide that is organized according to vehicles. i, There are five so-called vehicle centers (VCs)
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From page 30... ...
purchasing; and technical affairs, which includes research and some other technical activities. These people form the executive committee for Ford Automotive Operations.
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From page 31... ...
The technical organizations around the company are distributed in advanced vehicle technology, advanced manufacturing technology, automotive components, technical affairs, electrical and fuel handling, glass, the design center, and so on, who interact as a group monthly, to make sure that their technical efforts are aligned with what the vehicle centers want. The vehicle centers and the technical community together work out what they should be doing after the general strategy has been set by the strategic technology board.
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From page 32... ...
The fundamental research projects are decided more at the local research lab level. What we look for the technical community to provide every year to the strategic technology board is, once again, an assessment of where we are.
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From page 33... ...
Is the competition the way France manages technology in science or how Germany or Japan do it; or is it what the private sector does versus the public sector; or is it what one government agency does relative to another government agency? You ought to establish what you consider the competition to be and how it is doing its business.
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From page 34... ...
I think I see a contrast with what I read in the NSF strategic plan. You brought out, if I can translate, that benchmarking international science and technology commitments, trends, and policies elsewhere would be parallel to your benchmarking of competitors.
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From page 35... ...
I just want to follow up on a comment that was made about taking industrial metrics and rearranging them to measure fundamental research. A committee of the Industrial Research Institute, chaired by Bob Wood, has a list of some 50 or 55 metrics now that are used to measure industrial R&D.
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