Blog - Page 30 of 40

Jul 08

Service as a Knowledge Intensive Activity

By Joe Barkai Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) 4 Comments

The Product Service Challenge

Maintaining, servicing and repairing complex products have been a longstanding challenge. While much has been written on service metrics and performance indicators, it’s worthwhile highlighting some facts and figures. The following anecdotes are from various research studies I conducted in various discrete manufacturing sectors and additional sources:

Auto dealership repair shops are able to fix about 80% of cars during the first customer visit. While about third of the dealerships are able to deliver 90% or better first time fix (FTF) rate, nearly 20% of all dealership can manage only FTF of less than 70%.
When auto repair activities are scrutinized by the automakers for warranty reimbursement and qualify improvement, 37% of the replaced parts do not exhibit any problem and are identified as “no fault found” (NFF).
In commercial aviation, approximately 40% of mechanical parts and 60% of avionics parts are classified as NFF.
Consumer electronics manufacturers, wireless carriers and electronics retailers spend an estimated $17 billion to receive, repair, restock and resell returned merchandise. Nearly 70% of these returns are characterized as NFF, amounting for about 15% of the total loss resulting from product returns.

The financial burden incurred by product service and the critical influence poor service has on brand image and customer loyalty lead product companies and service organizations to make significant investments in developing diagnostic tools, training and service manuals. However, many service organizations report seeing only modest return on those efforts. Read More

Jul 06

Can Serviceability Standards Improve The Bottom Line?

By Joe Barkai Automotive, Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) No Comments

The Cost of Poor Service

Maintaining, servicing and repairing complex vehicle systems is a growing challenge. Much has been written on service metrics and operational performance, but it’s worthwhile to pause to highlight few figures to understand the impact that service (poor service, that is) has on the bottom line. The following data are from multiple research studies I conducted in automotive and aerospace repair operations:

Typically, auto repair shops are able to fix about 80% of the cars during the first customer visit. While about third of the dealerships are able to deliver better than 90% first time fix (FTF) rate, nearly 20% of all dealership manage only abysmal FTF of less than 70%.
When repairs activities are audited by the OEM for warranty reimbursement and quality assessment, 37% of replaced parts do not exhibit any problem and are identified as “no fault found” (NFF).
In commercial aviation, approximately 40% of mechanical parts and 60% of avionics parts are classified as NFF.

Jul 05

Can Driverless Cars Make Ethical Decisions?

By Joe Barkai Automotive, Autonomous, Connected, Electric, Shared Vehicles 2 Comments

Fully autonomous driverless cars may be in the future, but the vision is getting more vivid by the day. Great progress is being made in demonstrating autonomous car capabilities and enacting legislation to allow road testing, improving autonomous driving capabilities and inspire consumer confidence and acceptance of new mobility models.

But before autonomous cars are available at your local dealership or can be summoned from your smartphone app, there’s a number of significant hurdles that industry and governments need to overcome. The purpose of this short article is not to contest the viability of autonomous cars, but rather to highlight some of the interesting and difficult problems engineers, legislatures, and ethicists (yes, ethicists; this is not a typo) are working on.

Human Behavior and Interaction

Mary Bara, GM’s CEOs said in a recent interview: “I can put autonomous car out now, but the streets of New York are a great example [of the challenges]: the jogger, the dog, the baby carriage.” Recognizing static obstacles and even humans and small animals crossing the road is likely to improve considerably in the near future.

However, recognizing and responding to the complex and tacit interaction between drivers, cyclists and pedestrians will be much more difficult. For example, a police officer signaling for traffic to stop to allow pedestrian to cross the street. A driverless car doesn’t recognize the signal and proceeds through a green light but is unable to stop in time when the pedestrian steps into its path.

Weather

Daytime driving in the perfectly clear weather of California and Nevada doesn’t represent the average conditions autonomous vehicles will face in most other regions. Cars will have to be able to follow traffic lanes in snow covered roads, evade ice patches and potholes (I live in Boston!), and quickly recover when blinded by the sun.

Ethics

Making the right choice when there are conflicting objectives and restrictions is extremely difficult for advanced artificial intelligence based systems. The autonomous driving system is designed to obey the traffic rules, but will it be able to “break the law” to avoid hitting a pedestrian?

In fact, even if driverless cars eventually do possess advanced “moral judgment”, will all autonomous cars made by highly competitive OEMs employ identical decision “ethics” and collision avoidance strategies, or are they likely to make opposing decisions and stop in their track instead of evading each other?

Law and Liability

Issues surrounding accountability for damage caused by an autonomous and possibly even driver-assistant driving are only beginning to emerge. For instance, if a car’s software performed as advertised, but failed to prevent an accident, is the carmaker responsible for the damage? Will we see a wave of drivers arguing that the car’s software failed to provide adequate lane departure or blind spot warning?

As GM’s Bara acknowledged: “[it’s a] huge responsibility whether you are steering or not.”

Cost and Critical Mass

Even as technology improves and consumer doubts eventually abate, the additional cost of sensor and computing technologies may prevent autonomous cars from being affordable by the mainstream for a long time. Of course, the cost will improve dramatically when autonomous cars enter volume production, but this will not happen until consumer acceptance is high enough.

This is a chicken-and-egg problem because the full potential of autonomous vehicles, and connected cars in general, will not be realized until the number of such vehicles reaches a critical mass. But reaching this point will require that enough consumers buy into advanced connected car and autonomous driving technologies.

Jul 05

Electric Vehicles for Everyone, Not Just the Elite

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

Mary Bara, GM’s CEO, recently attended her 25th reunion at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. In a very insightful article and interview for LinkedIn, she openly discusses GM’s strategy and plans for connected cars, autonomous vehicles and electric cars. Here is what I think Ms. Bara got right, and where, I believe, GM has not quite caught up with the current trends in the consumer market.

Autonomous Vehicles

Ms. Bara believes “the transformations in the coming decade must be bold and focused”, but emphasizes that any success of autonomous vehicles pivots not only on advanced technology, much of which is already available in GM cars, but also on recognizing the critical role of infrastructure, technology and business ecosystem, and, of course, consumer acceptance.

GM “can put autonomous car out now, but the streets of New York are a great example [of challenges]: the jogger, the dog, the baby carriage” (see Driverless Cars Roadblocks.) Ms. Bara points out that broad market adoption depends on understanding and resolving difficult questions concerning drivers (and OEMs) responsibility: “[it’s a] huge responsibility whether you are steering or not.”

Ms. Bara intends to drive GM to lead rather than follow in developing autonomous car technologies, but, in contrast to “disruptive” companies like Google, she underscores the importance of continuous learning and step-wise improvement, and making steady progress while “pulling people along.”

Electric Vehicles

GM’s goal is to build “electric vehicles for everyone, not just the elite.” GM hopes the Chevrolet Bolt EV, which is supposed to be able to travel 200 miles on a single charge for a price tag of about $30,000, will help change consumers’ attitude towards EVs. Recently, GM announced new pricing of the 2016 Volt: $34,000 for the base LT model.

My take

Ms. Bara has a very sober view of the consumer market and will not predict when EVs might outnumber IC-propelled cars: “customers are very rational.” This is likely to prove a more pragmatic and successful approach to the EV market than some of her predecessors who seemed to rely on luxury models such as the Cadillac ELR plug-in hybrid to compete head to head against Tesla (since its introduction in 2013, ELR sales have yet to reach 1,500 units.) Instead, GM should leverage its strengths in global manufacturing and supply chain to build and service cost-effective mainstream products in multiple markets.

GM, like other major OEMs, is targeting the mainstream population, where, as many point out repeatedly, high vehicle cost and range anxiety keep most customers away from electric vehicles. Consumer trepidation concerning the viability and safety of driverless cars and autonomous driving is going to prove an even greater hurdle.

Industry should invest more in launching vehicles that operate in a defined—and therefore easier and safer to operate—spaces, such as a large company campus, airport inter-terminal and rental car transfer, or limited range delivery service. These will serve to improve autonomous driving technologies, lower the cost of electric powertrain components, and boost the trust and acceptance of wavering consumers.

Connected Cars

Connected cars services is one area GM doesn’t seem to be aligned with the consumer market, perhaps because of OnStar’s long presence (twenty years!) in the space. When discussing plans for next generation connected cars, Ms. Bara talks about wireless connectivity, 4GL and LTE standards, and smartphone integration. And while she emphasizes “putting the customer at the center of everything we do”, the OnStar model puts the vehicle’s identification number (VIN) in the center of the connected car universe, as do most other OEMs telematic and connected services products.

My Take

One of the fundamental principles of connected car services is the need to maintain a persistent mobile digital identity. Consumers living the always-connected lifestyle expect continuous access to personalized information and services from service and content providers of their choice, accessed and managed from their smartphones, and not restricted by the VIN of the vehicle they happen to be driving. Moreover, consumers do not want to pay the carmaker for services and data they already purchased and access using their smartphone, services that are of higher quality, faster and cheaper than those offered by the OEM.

GM should rethink the outdated OnStar model and place the consumers—drivers and passengers—in the center. This transition should be accompanied by the development of an active ecosystem of services and content providers.

Finally, it’s refreshing to see the growing recognition by Detroit automakers of the value of outside innovation, whether from OEM R&D centers in Silicon Valley or elsewhere (GM operates multiple research centers in the U.S. and around the world.) Presently, these centers seem to focus on core technologies, but can also serve as thinking tanks to improve the culture of customer centricity Ms. Bara wants to inspire at GM.

Jun 16

Reaching a Critical Mass of Connected Cars

By Joe Barkai Automotive, Internet of Things (IoT), Telematics 2 Comments

On the Voice America radio show Coffee Break with Game Changers on June 11, I argued that a “critical mass” of connected cars must be reached before we can realize some of the more important and exciting possibilities offered by connected cars, such as improved active safety, reduce traffic congestion and improvement in air quality.

I also suggested that the time to achieve this critical mass may be longer than some expect. If we assume that, perhaps, 30% of all vehicles need to be connected in order to have a meaningful impact, then it would take more than five years for a brand new technology to reach that level of penetration

According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), in 2012, there were 254,639,386 registered vehicles in the U.S. Of those, 183,171,882 were classified as passenger cars, while another 50,588,676 were light duty trucks. The rest of the fleet comprised of heavy duty trucks, buses and motorcycles. Read More