--- Richard: > Howdy Vorts. It was not my intent to create an atmosphere of hostility among us by making the remark...
Hey- no hostility. As usual on Vo, we are often arguing past each other anyway - while trying to squeeze in a relevant point or two ... which the other party doesn't necessarily disagree with (unless you truncate his post :-) If you read between the lines, there is very little hostility for the proposition that GM and Ford, as former representatives of the once-dominant US manufacturing sector, have let us all down immensely. This bruises our collective egos. There is plenty of blame to go around in those companies, starting at the top, but it all gets back to "commitment". In the very simplest terms, to succeed greatly in auto manufacturing (or almost anything in commercial life), management has to love, adore, worship, cherish --- the product: cars - the way Detroit used to love cars in the 50s and 60s, and the way Germans and Japanese (and their US customers) do now. At Apple, for instance, the corporate culture had the term "evangelist" in job descriptions. There are few evangelists for the lame products coming out of Detroit these days. Most engineers there do not brag about the product (with a few notable exceptions) or take pride in gaining market share- whereas in companies like Apple, or BMW (probably) they adore the job and the end-product enough to put in many hours per week of unpaid overtime, if need be. One gets the feeling that Germans and Japanese engineers eat, drink, live and worship the automobile, instead of collecting a check for a 7 hour day. The mere suggestion of doing any such thing "extra" for the love of the product itself- in Detroit- would most likely bring a hearty round of ROTF LOLs. Is that too harsh? ... 'nuf said... Jones
