The Death Of Diesel

Please enjoy the thoughts and musings of our friend, supporter, and long-time contributor Art van Bodegraven Jr., who passed away on June 18, 2017. Art was a prolific writer and had amassed a collection of unpublished blog posts he had planned to run well into the future. To honor his memory, we will continue to post these remaining blogs as he had intended. If you’ve been a fan of The Art of Art blog, check out our tribute.

 

No, not Vin; he is the picture of health. But, OTR truck cabs could be seeing their last days.  Supply Chain Management Review's  5/6/2017 issue contains a heartfelt hymn to trust by intrepid Bob Trebilcock.  Directionally, the piece shows that way to go home, to get where we're going.

The extensive article describing trust at General Motors is, sadly, off-target and just plain wrong in its predictors.  To summarize, The Chevy Bolt was lauded as Car of the Year in 2016.  Of course, GM is in the middle of a 3/4 million truck recall for emisions fraud, while VW languishes in $multi-billion settlements that threaten to sink the Graf Spee.  Between the two, these could signal the last gasp of consumer-level diesel in the US.

Some gains were made, at the expense of suppliers, with GM moving up to the ranks of "average", a position not held for some twenty years.  Innovation and strategies were credited with the gains.  Ourchasing suffered with a new hand at the wheel, with claimed "savings" of over $1 billion in a year, attributed to a shift from cost cutting to cost sharing.  One might wish to validate the supplier base view of these "gains".

Reported gains savaged the supplier base, with GM staking out a claim to last place, and reneged contracts, plus quality and performance demands.  The strategic move was to create SSE, Strategic Supplier Engagement, enabled by Global Purchaing and Supply Chain (GPSC).

One set of outcomes was a new set of transparent metrics and scoresheets.  Input was taken from suppliers, and suppliers were set up to give 360% feedback.

Some think that the suppliers get a payback for building the new relationship documents.  Once again, I'd be inclined to ask the supplier base - unfiltered.

Hey, cut flowers from Colombia are still only cut flowers.  And, a matrix is only a name for a film.  Collaborate away, and hang on to those increasingly rare diesels.