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jvp asked: Would you be willing to introduce us to the team of engineers and others that work on the Corvette? I'm curious as to how many folks are directly tied to the Corvette.
Tadge answered: We pride ourselves on Corvette for being uniquely accessible to our customers. Many members of our team support Corvette events around the country whether it is race weekends, museum events or shows like Corvette's at Carlisle in Pennsylvania. I can't think of another example in any industry where customers can talk directly to the folks who make virtually all of the product decisions. Most large companies have layers of "customer service" or "customer relations" departments (and many out-source that function). The bottom line is that many on our team are known very well by customers and have ongoing relationships far beyond the traditional manufacturer/customer definition.
When I talk about the Corvette team I include everyone who has a part in getting cars to customers. For the most part, we engineer the car (and I am including both the street car and the C7.R race car here) in Michigan and build it (the street car) in Kentucky, but there are people around the world supporting us in functions like Marketing and Distribution, Sales and Service and Global Purchasing. If you came to visit us in Michigan, you would see our program team is comprised of representatives from all the traditional corporate departments: Program management, Manufacturing, Marketing, Design, Engineering, Purchasing, Finance, Quality, Customer care & Aftersales, Test & Validation, Vehicle Development and others. Each representative on the team is supported by large departments with functional expertise and responsibility for their particular area of the car. Also, those are not listed in any priority order. Like every good team, everyone holds equal responsibility for a successful product.
Within Engineering there is a further division with representatives from Body Structure, Exterior panels, Electrical, HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning), Interior, Propulsion Systems and Chassis. Again, each lead engineer is supported by a functional department with vast expertise and resources that GM can bring to bear on developing a new vehicle. Propulsion systems, for example, is a huge organization designing engines and transmissions for all GM vehicles. The Small Block team is just one part of that organization that engineers our V8 engines.
Within Manufacturing there are further divisions between technical specialists like the Body shop, Paint and General Assembly. Manufacturing engineers have to design tools and processes to build Corvettes efficiently. They also have to coordinate the installation and tune-in at our manufacturing site in Bowling Green. Bowling Green Assembly, led by Plant Manager Kai Spande, assembles the cars (and LT4 engines) and ships them to customers all around the world.
The number of people working on Corvette varies tremendously over time. When an all-new car is being developed, we have hundreds of people working full time and more than a thousand working part time (shared resources with other projects). And that does not include our suppliers or the second and third tier companies shipping components to our first-tier suppliers. If you added them all up there would be close to 10,000 names on the list. After a "Major" program like the C7, most of the resources migrate to other projects and a core team with maybe a couple dozen full-time employees remain supported by a couple hundred part time folks. That smaller team manages all the annual changes and continuous improvement.
The automobile is the most complex, highly regulated consumer product, so takes a small army to put a modern vehicle on the road. Here is a picture from one of our regular "All People" meetings. This one is from last year celebrating our Le Mans victory and includes both the race and street car team. I do not believe it has been shown publicly before.
09-12-2016, 01:18 PM
[ANSWERED] Introduce the Corvette Engineering Team
