I think it threatens the existence of some of these companies. I have no idea what will happen in five years but I know what I see. Things are going to change
The words are from Terry Woychowski And he knows well what he’s talking about. Woychowski was a senior executive of General Motors and in recent years he is president of Cassoft Global Technologies, consulting that is responsible for explaining to manufacturers where they have room to save money and how they can do it.
His comparisons, of course, are now focused on Chinese cars. How its manufacturers get so much money in the production of their cars and how they position themselves to be a real threat to traditional West producers.
Consulting that pass, obviously, by disassembling cars from one and the other and pointing out the differences.
Taking out the … shame?
To one of those last demonstrations the journalists of Automotive News. “What we see from the Chinese is an existential threat,” Woychowski stressed. Is exactly The same speech Employee by Jim Farley, president of Ford, a few months ago.
In Ford they had reached the same conclusion as Cerseoft Global Technologies experts by dismantling some Chinese cars themselves. The strategy is usual, with traditional manufacturers trying to understand what they do in China different from them to lower their vehicles.
In fact, This same company already told Toyota that could forget all the way they had so far. Everything learned and applied little by little, with minimal improvements but that added their excellent and reliable vehicles also made them more expensive and prevented them from competing at a price.
And something very similar is what they have told US manufacturers. They put as an example the complications they face when manufacturing the ceiling of the vehicles. According to the consultant, the Americans use IMAES WITH RARE EARTH with a dollar cost for each of them. That forces them to use steel next to aluminum to guarantee their fixation. On the contrary, the Chinese use a simple adhesive strip that each one costs each. That is, at least twelve less and a much less complex and faster process.
Something similar happens in the dashboard. While Americans use heavy metals after the dashboard, the Chinese or Tesla use plastics with profusion. The same pointed to Toyota, making it clear that, without the vibrations of a combustion engine, this way of working had become obsolete and only the product increased.
In addition, from Caseoft they point out that all this competitive advantage has been possible because the State itself has created the China Automotive Technology & Research Center (Catarc)an agency created in 1985 that defines the standards of approval but also provides assistance for the development of new products, including the development of driving aid systems or autonomous systems.
They have promoted an industry, they say, intensely competitive aware that some companies will stay along the way. However, this forces them to work faster and find solutions as quickly as possible. A pressure that leads them to use a month to get a new piece that arrives from an external supplier while in the West you need to use nine months. A meeting? Caseoft experts say that arranging an appointment with the person in charge of a supplier does not take less than two months but that in China they barely solve it in a week.
If you want to compete in price, manufacturers have to standardize their products more, they say. It is the strategy that was used by the United States government to save costs during and after World War II and is the technique applied by Chinese manufacturers where the truly differential is software.
Photo | Caesoft Global Technologies