A Lean "Plant Rat" Becomes CEO

TOM WALSH: DCX shifts into future

LaSorda's challenge: Keep up momentum

Chrysler's Tom LaSorda, a “plant rat” turns CEO

Tom LaSorda, a former GM guy who moved to DCX, has been named Chrysler Group president and chief executive. It's nice to see a manufacturing guy heading any automotive organization, rather than the finance or marketing guys.

“Chrysler is for real. Tom LaSorda is the strongest lean-manufacturing guy at a top level,” Ron Harbour, president of Harbour Consulting, told the Free Press in June. “He's taking his background in lean manufacturing and drilling it into product people, purchasing and other departments and getting them to all buy in.”