Observations from this weekend — some general words from the General and a chance observation of some local color.
GM’s VP of Quality Visits Nashville
Mr. Jamie Hresko, GM Vice President of Quality visited town to meet with GM employees and contractors at the Spring Hill, Tennessee facility that is being retrofitted for new vehicle programs to start production in a few months. He was interviewed by our local “newspaper” the Tennessean. I put the term in quotes because ours is a poor newspaper, with one of the lowest subscription rates of any major city newspaper in the country.
Mr. Hresko offers opinions on the future of GM and their quality initiatives. Of course, given that he’s here to represent the corporation with a local stake, his comments steer toward domestic brands. Buick, which tied for first place with Lexus in the most recent J.D. Power and Associates survey for the fewest defects, gets a lot of attention in this interview for obvious reasons — it’s a tangible success for GM in the quality department.
However, there are a couple of nuggets for Saab, as follows:
(On the subject of quality measures)
…if you look at the overall portfolio across all the brands, they all improved significantly this year. We didn’t have one program that went south. All of our numbers moved in the right direction. We didn’t have one brand deteriorate.
That’s great news. Let’s hope that it contiues in the right direction.
(Responding to a question of why they didn’t always make good choices in the past)
No, I think we were more of a regional company. We made a move three or four years ago towards a global engineering environment. We’re going to engineer the (Chevrolet) Camaro in Australia. We engineer the new (Chevrolet) Aveo in Korea. We’re doing a lot of sharing of engineering resources, which allows us to pick the best practices.
When you take the whole, global best-practice ideas and strategies and initiatives, and you find the right cost, and quality is the premium (thing to consider) before you select a supplier, it all adds up.
Again, this has to be a win for Saab in two or three important areas: turbocharging, safety and front-wheel drive come to mind immediately as Saab ‘best practice’ areas of expertise.
Mr. Hresko also has a few candid comments about GM’s loss of market share and the slow climb ahead to regain the dominant position once again.
The entire interview can be read here
Odd Saab License Plate of the Week
Spotted this afternoon in Nashville: two college-age women in a red Saab 9-3 with this license plate. That’s right: “I Love Mississippi” emblazoned on a Mississippi state tag. The irony: there are no Saab dealers in the state. None. Mississippi gets no love from Saab, or vice versa.
