C.A.R. Management Briefing Seminars - Wrap-up

CAR MANAGEMENT BRIEFING SEMINARS 2007
Friday Wrap-Up - Insights in Traverse City
By Steve Purdy
TheAutoChannel.com
Detroit Bureau

Traverse City, MI – August 10, 2007 – It’s now Friday morning and the week is winding down here in Northern Michigan. This conference has been going on for 42 years, I’m told. So what were the trends and issues discussed in 1965, I wonder? In those days smaller cars and muscle cars were all the rage. Computers were not even a gleam in the engineer’s eye. The big three had most of the US market. I’d love to go back and browse the archives from the first Management Briefing Conference.

Reflecting on the MBS here in Traverse City I’m struck by the technology and complexity of the industry today. I shared dinner with a fellow from Ann Arbor-based Coherix, Ray Pittman, who was describing how their optically-based parts inspection system takes a million laser readings at a time to measure flat metal surfaces, not in millimeters but in microns, to find inconsistencies in parts like cylinder heads. Referred to as coordinate measurement machines, or CMMs, a 3-dimentional image of the part is generated in less than three minutes allowing remarkably accurate inspection of selected parts. Ray tells me that they’ll soon have that system so refined that it will be fast enough to inspect every part as it passes along the assembly line.

Another amazing technology to me was described by another dinner companion, Tom Murray of the Gage Company. His company specializes in taking the mixture of paint and solvents, produced when the automakers’ paint shops flush the sprayers to change colors, and separating them for recycling. Ecologically that is a crucial business and makes a nice niche, I’m sure, for Tom and his colleagues.

Dassault Systems had a booth outside the main conference room promoting their 3D CAD systems used currently by Toyota and Boeing. They’d like to see more of the OEMs design and test components with their Delmia and Catia systems respectively, so they’re here to “flirt” with potential new customers.

Technology in managing the business, not just designing the products, is equally as amazing. Seems like about half the vendor booths here are promoting services focused on data management or software development. These software systems are focused on everything from product development to financial controls, and from personnel management to infrastructure design. You name it – there is software and hardware being promoted here.

The University of Michigan’s solar car racing team has been around all week drumming up support for their involvement in both national and international competition. The Federal government has pulled the plug on supporting the program so they’re looking for other ways to support the project. Back in 1990 when I encountered the racers here in Michigan on one of their overnight breaks at a fair grounds the average speed of the solar racers was around 20-mph. These cars are now averaging about 60-mph because of advances in solar cell composition. They’re now using gallium arsenide, you probably know.

Then there are other fun new auto businesses like Gibbs Technologies started by a New Zealander, Mr. Gibbs, who found a way to design amphibious vehicles that could go fast on land and fast in the water. Amphibious vehicles of the past were notoriously slow in both environments. By designing an amazingly sophisticated suspension system that is competent on land and can collapse up into the body when in the water the Gibbs team has created a line of vehicles that are plenty fast in both realms. The Gibbs folks have applied this design to a sports car that resembles a Miata called Aquada, an ATV/wave runner called Quadski, and even a military vehicle called Humdinga.

I had an exciting ride in the Aquada on Orchard Lake in suburban Detroit a few weeks ago with Neil Jenkins, president and CEO of Gibbs Technologies Ltd., and I must say they have that vehicle well sorted. They just need to add a couple of deflectors on the sides of the windshield to keep the passengers dry in choppy water. They’re already taking deposits on the Aquada– quite a few deposits, in fact – for this $90,000 sports car/speed boat.

Like any good conference much of the real work done here is on the golf course and the dance floor. Here at the Grand Traverse Resort the CAR staff has done a magnificent job again at hosting the event. The media room was packed during the peak days of newsmakers attendance. And the hard-working PR folks were hustling up good contacts all week. Our friends at AutoCom PR kept us connected with plenty of news.

The MBS is a good microcosm of the ‘business’ of making cars. And after a week of immersion in this intense environment I’m coming away optimistic about the future of the industry. The theme of the conference “Managing Discontinuous Change,” is an appropriate one since change is both inevitable and increasingly unpredictable.