May 04
Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) (Andy Warhol, 1963)

Auto Industry’s Short-Term Crisis and Long-Term Decline Risk

By Automotive, Business Strategy No Comments

The rapid spread of the coronavirus is having a devastating impact on all business sectors and is throwing the economic outlook into uncertainty. Arguably, no other manufacturing sector has been impacted more than auto manufacturers and their suppliers.

Automakers are seeing their revenue and profitability nearly disappearing overnight as potential buyers are stuck in lockdown and shun spending large amounts of cash.

And car manufacturers are also bearing the financial burden of supporting tens of thousands of furloughed employees.

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May 01
His Master's Voice

His Master’s Voice: Why Automakers are Wrong About In-Car Voice Assistants

By Automotive No Comments

Bullitt, Tell Me a Joke

Automakers are flaunting future cars equipped with voice recognition systems. At the recent Mercedes-Benz Voice of the Car Summit, company and guest speakers discussed innovation in speech recognition and speech control, and described a fanciful future in which you can not only use your voice to control the car’s inside air temperature, but also have a semi-intelligent dialog with your car’s built-in assistant. 

Judging by the very passionate speakers at the event, there are individuals who actually like to hold conversations with their cars. They even give them names (mostly female names, although “Bullitt” was also showcased) and use them not only while in the car, but also when talking about it.

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Apr 23
Untitled (Harold Ross, c. 2014)

Environmental Exhibitionism and Personal Power Generation

By Uncategorized No Comments

Shopping for Tomatoes

When you shop for tomatoes, says Hadas Merzel, the CEO of electrical & electronic manufacturing company Engis, you have several options. If you are a convenience-first consumer, you probably prefer the broad selection and long business hours your local supermarket offers. If you are health-conscious, you may buy organic produce at a local weekend farmers market, which also supports the local economy. Or, perhaps, you go all the way and grow your own tomatoes in a small patch in your back yard or cultivate a hydroponic tomato garden on the porch.

Merzel beleievs consumers should have similar flexibility and range of choices when purchasing electricity.

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Mar 31
The Furniture Factory (Bumpei Usui, 1925)

Design Collaboration in the Age of Pandemic

By Manufacturing, PLM No Comments

The COVID-19 pandemic is bringing key business activities to a near absolute halt. If you work at a product organization, activities that used to be routine such as a team meeting for a critical design review or sending a team of experts to walk the plant floor to investigate a product manufacturing quality problem are no longer possible.

Overnight, overly lean single-source supply chain strategies and hyper-speed agile product development practices exposed the fragility of many organizations’ supply chain practices.

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Mar 30
Des gens dont le soleil rjouit peu la vue (Honore Daumier, 1855)

Developing the Electric Vehicle Market – Technology vs. Mindset and Attitude

By Automotive, Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared Vehicles No Comments

Traditional Automakers and Vehicle Electrification

The danger facing traditional automakers charting their future in the nascent electric vehicle market is not electric powertrain technology, it is in their mindset and attitude.

The tallest hurdle on the way to mass-market adoption is not in charging infrastructure and battery supply chain, it is the headwind caused by the combined impact of new markets, new customers and new regulations.

I find recent conversations with Ford Motor newly appointed COO Jim Farley and Thomas Ingenlath, the CEO of Polestart (a Volvo company), a good illustration of the deeply rooted differences in mindset and attitude between the two companies.

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