Episode #109 is a discussion with Jim Morgan, Director, Global Body Exterior and Stamping Business Unit Engineering, Ford Motor Company. We will be talking about Lean product development methods in this show. James will be a plenary speaker at the upcoming Lean Transformation Summit, presented by the Lean Enterprise Institute, in Dallas this March 9th and 10th. Hope to see you there!
James Morgan is Director, Global Body Exterior and Stamping Business Unit Engineering, Ford Motor Company. Morgan is responsible for Body Structures and Exterior Systems Engineering, as well as Stamping Engineering, Facilities and Equipment for Ford globally.
Before joining Ford in 2004, Morgan was vice president of Troy Design & Manufacturing, a tier 1 manufacturing and engineering service provider. In addition to more than 20 years operations and engineering management experience, Morgan has authored or co-authored several articles on product development and is co-author of the book The Toyota Product Development System: Integrating People, Process And Technology based, on his Shingo Award winning research at the University of Michigan. Morgan holds master's and doctoral degrees in engineering from the University of Michigan.
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Transcript
Here's the cleaned transcript with H2 subheaders. Same pass as before: ads and timestamps removed, disfluencies cleaned up, transcription errors fixed (including the usual “Mark Raven” / “Mark Grin” nonsense in the intro bumpers). Flags at the bottom.
Mark Graban: Well, Jim, thanks for taking time out to join us here today on the podcast.
Jim Morgan: Mark, it's my pleasure. Thanks a lot for inviting me. I've been looking forward to a chance to talk about the Ford story and Lean in product development.
Mark Graban: Can you start by introducing the listeners to yourself and your background and how you got introduced to Lean, and then maybe transition that into talking about your current role and what you're doing there at Ford?
From the University of Michigan to Ford
Jim Morgan: Sure. In terms of my background, I've been in automotive product development primarily, body and stamping development, for about 25 years altogether, starting out at a tier one supplier and then eventually moving to Ford and the role that I'm in today.
In terms of my introduction to Lean, I was extremely fortunate to be at the University of Michigan at just the right time, when it was really an incubator for a lot of new Lean thought and development. I was able to work with Jeff Liker and John Shook and Al Ward, and by extension with Jim Womack, because at the time U of M was working very closely with LEI. I was exposed to a lot of the original work in Lean, both in manufacturing and then eventually in product development through Al Ward and the research that a number of students had done, including myself.
I also was very fortunate in that I had spent a number of years in industry before I went there, so I had the opportunity to see the other side of product development, non-Lean operations. I think that made the two and a half years I spent working not only with those leading thought leaders, but also with Toyota product development sort of at their highest point, really valuable for me, both in terms of scholarship and in terms of professional growth. At the same time, I was still working at the tier one supplier, so I was able to apply a lot of the lessons that I learned real time, and see what worked and what didn't. That helped evolve the model that turned into not only the dissertation that I wrote, but the book that Jeff Liker and I wrote on the Toyota Product Development System.
About the time I completed all that research and completed the program at U of M, I was hired into Ford. They were very focused on re-engineering or revitalizing their product development system. They weren't exactly sure what they wanted to do, so they were looking for people with different experiences. I certainly fit that description, and so I was allowed then to apply a lot of what I learned and developed over that time period at Ford.
The Ford story is such a wonderful story. Not only was it an incredible opportunity for me, but it was a chance to be part of the revitalization of just an iconic global company whose renaissance was led really by a new product. It was clearly a product-led revitalization, and I had the opportunity to be in the middle of all that, and apply a lot of what I had learned previously, and also continued to learn, not only from the leadership at Ford, guys like Derrick Kuzak and Alan Mulally, but also from Mazda, who was part of the company at the time, and finally from the incredibly talented people that were at Ford.
Really, the big learning from all this is the power of providing some guidance and then allowing people to really enroll in the process or take ownership of the process, and how successful that is.
Overcoming “Our Work Is Different”
Mark Graban: In working with engineering and design environments, I imagine there's got to be a lot of resistance or concern or anxiety people have, to look and say, we're not cranking out lots of cars here, this is not a manufacturing environment. Can you talk a little bit about how you introduced the idea of the Toyota Product Development System, as opposed to a Toyota Production System, and what that discussion is like?
Jim Morgan: That's a really interesting question. The first reaction of most of the engineers that I worked with was not a positive one. There was a lot of pushback. There was a lot of, “You don't understand, that doesn't work in this environment. Our work is somehow different.” That's one of the first hurdles that you need to overcome.
One of the ways we did that was just by identifying the tremendous amount of rework that was going on in the process. The engineers clearly were not fond of having to do all this rework. We made it very clear that by applying standardization to processes and to certain product attributes and architecture, we can eliminate a lot of the rework by using process and design architecture attributes that we knew were manufacturable, we knew performed to the appropriate levels to deliver the product attributes. And consequently eliminate a lot of the rework that they were having to do, and make the process a lot more efficient. That went on from way up front, when they were developing clays, all the way through to the manufacture of the tools and dies and things that are necessary to actually produce the vehicle bodies.
You'd be surprised at how pretty consistent the arguments were over time. But one of the things we reflected on recently was, when we looked at the success of the overall initiative, one of the things we looked at was what we called Pulse, which is a survey that all the folks take, that's sort of a measure of morale. Not only did we decrease lead time, decrease our cost, increase our quality, but we improved our overall morale scores, I think probably 25 percent during a period that was a huge restructuring for Ford in a very difficult time. I think it demonstrated that once the engineers became familiar with the power of a lot of these concepts, it was a very positive experience for them as well.
What Rework Looks Like in Product Development
Mark Graban: Back to what you said a minute ago. What's an example when you talk about rework in a product development process?
Jim Morgan: You would develop, let's say, something simple like a hood architecture, an inner hood architecture, that has a number of attributes it has to meet. First of all, it has to be manufacturable. So we need to be able to stamp it out and weld it together. And then the architecture itself has certain performance requirements, for instance, front end crash, or pedestrian protection requirements that it has to achieve.
If you design a unique architecture on every single vehicle on an inner hood, which really, the appearance of it doesn't matter much to the customer, your chances of being able to manufacture it the first time, or having it pass any of these tests the first time, are relatively small. By using proven architecture. And so that leads to design cycles of rework. By using a more proven architecture that's just modified to fit the shape of the vehicle, you have an architecture that you already know can be manufactured and does pass a lot of the regulatory requirements.
Mark Graban: Was there resistance that what you would call rework was considered maybe just, well, that's just the way it has to be? In terms of the tolerance of that time and cost that was added from the quote unquote rework.
Jim Morgan: Absolutely. That's what made it so insidious, Mark, is that a lot of the stuff that was really waste, was rework, was just considered part of the process. It wasn't until we had the opportunity to point out that in Lean systems at some of our best competitors, a la Toyota at the time, they weren't having to do the same level of rework after testing that we were.
Preview of the Lean Transformation Summit Talk
Mark Graban: You're going to be one of the speakers at the upcoming Lean Transformation Summit in Dallas this March. Can you give us a bit of a preview of what some of the main themes are going to be in your session?
Jim Morgan: Absolutely. A couple of things. First of all, I'm going to talk a little bit about the Ford story, and the incredible sort of renaissance that we've gone through over the last few years, in particular the last couple of years, in terms of all the corporate leading indicators, like market share and stock price and profitability, product awards, things like that. Just to make sure everybody's familiar with the fantastic work that's being done over there.
I'll talk a bit about, more specifically in my organization, the changes that we made and the outcomes from those changes. I'm going to talk a bit about what I call a systems-based or holistic model of high performance engineering or Lean product development. That works on or addresses issues within the three key elements of people, process, and tools and technology, and the power of fit, or having various attributes of those elements very well aligned, and how much more powerful it is to work on the entire system than any specific aspect of that system. Then I'll talk about some very specific things we did within those key elements, and what the outcomes were from those.
Then finally, I'll go on to talk a bit about the application of Lean, or a systems-based Lean model, across a number of industries. One I know you're familiar with, and that's healthcare. But also the opportunity to take on a lot of our current challenges, whether they be environmental, or the current economic crisis, or one of my particular favorites, and that's something that I refer to as design for the other 90 percent. That's our ability to bring high quality products to a larger portion of the world's population.
Mark Graban: Talking about differences in the products or in the development process for those other regions of the world?
Jim Morgan: Yeah, so all of the above. Designing for environments and customer needs that are not typically addressed, as well as Lean processes, both in engineering and manufacturing, that allow these products to be produced effectively, delivered effectively through logistics, to help serve a larger community.
Leading by Asking Instead of Telling
Mark Graban: Can you elaborate a little bit? I'm curious, because I think this is something that's really transferable, maybe as a final discussion point here, is the leadership model. You plan on talking about it. Do you have one example you can share? The idea of leading by asking, instead of leading by telling in that very kind of traditional directive way.
Jim Morgan: That was absolutely key to overcoming a lot of the challenges early on, was leading by asking. If you think about the organization that I was responsible for, it was very non-traditional and included what was typically or traditionally a product development organization and a manufacturing engineering organization, as well as facilities, and we had it on a global basis. So clearly there was a great deal, even after 20 years in the business, there was a great deal that I needed to learn. And so it was just logical to ask questions.
But also by asking questions and being sincere, you learn more about your people. You learn more than just the answer that they provide on the surface about their depth of knowledge and their perspective. And you also, by asking questions and really listening and acting on the responses, you help to enroll people in the process, and you help them to develop ownership of the process.
One sort of high-level example that comes to mind is in our die making process at Dearborn Tool and Die. Our internal tool shop was not very competitive when we started out. It was very challenging. We had a lot that we could learn from, both Mazda and Toyota, and we did in fact learn from those companies and implement a lot of those ideas. But the very powerful part of the whole process was when the folks took ownership and went way beyond anything that we had learned specifically from those companies to develop a die making process that's not only as competitive, but in our last benchmark, in some aspects, more competitive than the folks that we learned from. With very unique ideas that really became their own. And I think that was the power of enrolling folks in the process and letting them take a lot of ownership of it.
Closing
Mark Graban: I'm glad you're going to be able to share your lessons and your learning at the Lean Transformation Summit, March 9th and 10th in Dallas. I'll be there, so I'll be in the audience and very much looking forward to hearing kind of the fuller version of the story. But I want to thank you, Jim, for taking time to give us a bit of a preview here in the podcast.
Jim Morgan: I appreciate the opportunity, Mark, and I look forward to seeing you down in Texas.
FAQ
The Toyota Product Development System is an approach to engineering and design built on the same principles as the Toyota Production System, covering people, process, and tools and technology. Jim Morgan's research at the University of Michigan, co-authored with Jeffrey Liker, documented how Toyota integrates these elements in a way that produces shorter lead times, lower costs, and higher quality.
By applying standardization to processes and to product architecture attributes that were known to be manufacturable and known to meet performance requirements. Rather than designing unique architecture on every vehicle, Ford's engineering teams modified proven architecture to fit each vehicle's shape, which cut the design cycles of rework that engineers had come to accept as part of the job.
Leading by asking means sincere, open-ended questions instead of directive answers. Jim Morgan describes how asking questions helped him learn more about his people's depth of knowledge and perspective, and how listening and acting on the responses helped people take ownership of the process rather than just executing instructions from above.
