In the Toronado post the other day, CC reader/contributor Roger628 left a link to a two-part 1966 GM Engineering Journal that discusses the whole evolution, development, engineering and production of the 1966 Toronado. It’s quit a read, and some of it needs to be taken with a grain of salt, like the decision to use drum brakes was arrived at testing various systems including discs at the front and rear. And supposedly drum brakes gave the best overall performance. They left out the key word “cost” ahead of “performance.
Anyway, the two journals give quite a good description of how the various corporate divisions and divisional groups function in the process of the creations and production of a new car. And there were these two organizational charts, which gives a graphic idea of the challenge facing management in keeping it all functioning reasonably smoothly, in light of the inevitable politics. This is the corporate chart, but only as it relates to automotive and defense divisions. There were of course a number of other ones too, like EMD (locomotives) and Frigidaire, among others.
click image for full size view
And here’s a typical divisional organizational chart, Oldsmobile in this case. It all does give some perspective about the huge organizational challenges CEOs like Roger Smith faced in trying to streamline GM into a more cohesive organization, given that greater centralization was inevitable in light of the increasing technical challenges of regulations, technology, competition from Japan and an ever-shrinking market share.
If you have the time, those GM Journals make for an interesting trip back in time, although there is a fair amount of overlap/repetition in the two: oldcarbrochures.com
Okay, Paul, thanks for that vintage chart.
I feel like I’m in elementary school, in Science class, watching MET(Massachusetts Educational Television), during 1978-81. Thanks, for the flashback. 🙂
The chart at the top…doesn’t it illustrate the “chimney” system of organization, which made decision-making so damned slow and new-car development cumbersome and costly?
Say Pontiac Motor Division had designed a new dashboard switch widget, It resulted in a new, more elegant-feeling control that would be standard in its Bonneville models, an upgrade from the Catalina. The decision at the Division level needs to work its way up through managers in the Car and Truck Group and Automotive and Defense to the EVP level; the EVP then bounces it over to the other EVP, from whom it goes to Engineering, Manufacturing, Marketing and Public Relations (if it will affect how the company wants to look to the public and the media) where anybody could put the kibosh on it, in which case the accumulated kiboshes would make their way back up to the EVP level and get bounced back to the Division.
Having communications directly between Engineering at the Division level and the staff in the Operations Staff would have streamlined the process immensely.
I’m curious about some possible inefficiencies in the Oldsmobile org chart.
For example, there is a Director of Reliability with nobody reporting to him. However, there is a Product Reliability Engineer with staff under him. If the Director has a question or request, does it need to follow the stated chain of command through the Chief Engineer and down, or does the Product Reliability Engineer really report to two bosses, and the direct linkage from the Director isn’t shown?
Similarly, the “Administrative Engineer” seems like they would really report to two (or more!) bosses in the department as well.
The Director of Reliability gets yelled at when the General Manager’s wife’s car won’t start.
everything you need to know about gm organization, or any large organization’s organization is summarized in the above clause removed and repeated here for emphasis …….
….. although there is a fair amount of overlap/repetition in the two ….
Fascinating in many ways. A couple of very general observations extended to today’s automakers…
Part of the original success of GM came from Alfred Sloan’s decentralized management with centralized controls. When cars became much more complex to develop, and when brands began to overlap (for whatever reasons), this broke down (and the org charts became ever more complex). Smith and others had a big job to determine what would come after Sloan’s system to fix this. Unfortunately, it’s not clear they ever did (and it appears GM is still searching for its way).
In a sense, Chrysler has had this problem for decades, riding the roller coaster from one organizational structure to another (with it never quite clear what each of it’s brands stood for; part of what it appears Marchionne is trying to fix). By contrast, Ford has perhaps sometimes had too much central control (e.g.- from the Ford family, perhaps even until just recently when Mulally was CEO).
Detailed stuff. But it clearly affects the end product, and it would be interesting to know more about how some of the other automakers are set up and how their cars are developed.
Yes, Ford probably was overly-centralized, at least in the U.S., but it never was able to get North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific working from the same script. Witness the Escort “World Car” that allegedly had two parts in common between the European and North American versions. Mulally;s great achievement was in getting the regions to collaborate in developing common products as well as finally biting the bullet regarding developing unique platforms and powertrains for Australia and New Zealand.
There are still separate models developed for China and India and some other markets though, eg Figo, Escort, new Taurus and Ecosport although the latter is sold in Europe and Australasia also.
Figo? Really?
Nice name… I can imagine what that thing looks like.
Glaring omission in my mind was the lack of any entry for “sales” or “sales administration” but at the time GM’s domestic market share was hovering around the 50% mark, so it was presumed to be a given. “If we build it, they’ll buy it.”
There’s a “Marketing” VP in the corporate Operations Staff, and there’s a General Sales Manager at the division level. It’s quite well represented. Sales was always primarily the responsibility of the divisions, until very late in the game.
I recall reading somewhere that when Roger Smith started his grand reorganization of General Motors, the company had eighteen levels of management; when he had completed his reorganization there were nineteen levels of management.
By contrast the Japanese automobile companies had about three levels of management. Want to guess who was more efficient?
Here’s another interestingly done “org chart” of GM, probably from the early 50’s or maybe even late 40’s judging by the appearance of the division emblems. This was done by the prolific commercial illustrator Boris Artzybasheff.