Anyone have any idea what this consultant might have been doing to get this kind of productivity?
Or, maybe he called it "agile", but I'm not really thinking gymnasts and ballerinas are magically great developers, though they are strikingly agile. This article needs some kind of detail--it doesn't answer most of the W's of good journalism: Who, what, when, where, why, and how. We've only got a really vague what ("a good developer built something that I liked a lot") and a vague where (Chrysler). Somehow all of the good bits are completely left out.
I got to work on them quite a bit growing up--they at least gave me lots of experience fixing things. But it'll take another generation before folks who experienced Chrysler in the 80's and 90's, like me, start buying Chrysler products again...and then only if they are actually making good cars now (which I'm not confident of). I'm afraid I've been well-trained to buy only Japanese cars. I've had two fantastic Nissans in the 20 years I've been driving, and one mediocre (but never broke in dangerous ways or left me stranded--it just had some annoying quirks) Toyota...I like to drive my cars into the ground, and the ground comes at me way too fast with American cars, and Chrysler cars in particular.
Sorry, I know you weren't looking for a rip on Chrysler, but suggesting I buy a Chrysler product sent me reeling into the past for a moment...I could smell the burning oil, feel the claustrophobia of laying on concrete under a jacked up minivan, and everything. I just thought I'd share my pain with you. ;-)
BTW, those of us who follow the financial news are laughing because Daimler (the previous owner) literally paid Cerberus to take Chrysler off its hands. The purchase price was nominally $7.4B, but it was structured as an investment into Chrysler itself. In other words, Cerberus "bought" Chrysler by putting cash into a business it now owns, effectively paying itself. In addition to that, Daimler paid Cerberus $650M in cash. Yes, that's the seller giving money to the buyer.
The reason for this is that Chrysler is currently worth less than nothing. Daimler's earnings are up $1.5B since getting rid of it, and Cerberus took on Chrysler's $18B of pension obligations. Cerberus probably figures that it can renegotiate with the UAW and default on Chrysler's pension plan, which'll help return it to profitability. Daimler couldn't do this because its profitable Mercedes division was effectively subsidizing workers in Detroit, costing it bargaining power in any attempt to stiff the unions.
Edit: curses, beaten by 2 minutes. And the other post brings the details, too.
In an incomprehensible display of customer loyalty, my parents next purchase was a 4 door dodge Aspen. This car had a 6 cylinder engine which produced a hamster-threatening 90 horsepower. The best thing about this car was the horrible white paint which perfectly obscured the bird crap...
The design and production of these cars ranks as the worst example of capital deployment in American corporate history. I mean, efforts like this turned off an entire generation of customers.