致謝
序言（王晃三博士）7
開場白：故事、寓言（鍾漢清） 11
台灣戴明圈的故事（鍾漢清） 15
簡介戴明、威廉‧謝爾肯巴赫先生（鍾漢清） 23
第一部 導言：戴明到日本（鍾漢清） 35
戴明與台灣(簡記)（鍾漢清） 45
《1950 年戴明博士對日本高階經營者演講》 53
品管九講 譯者序言（劉振） 64
品管九講 品質管制與企業發展（小柳賢一） 67
日本品質管制之回顧（戴明） 74
日本的成就（戴明） 80
第二部 導言 （鍾漢清） 91
《戴明博士四日談》中文版導言（鍾漢清增修） 102
一首值得傳唱的史詩：《轉危為安》（鍾漢清） 109
運用戴明循環（鍾漢清） 118
鳥瞰 Lean/Six Sigma 運動 （1979-2008） （鍾漢清） 128
簡談實驗設計（鍾漢清） 153
由戴明理念談實驗設計之應用（蔡坤祥） 158
西式管理風格必須改弦更張（戴明） 163
戴明博士到 HP，團隊合作（鍾漢清） 172
第三部
2008 年東海戴明學者講座 185
主講人：威廉‧謝爾肯巴赫先生簡介 188
講座之一 193
講座之二 227
講座之三 252
尾聲 Epilog 2008 年戴明淵博知識系統之旅 275
附錄
第四部 東海…人物
播種季 286
東海大學和 英國 Essex 大學的點滴 288
從東海第七宿舍讀司馬賀先生談 30 年的緣份 294
慶祝東海 IE 創立四十年 鍾漢清 297
前進英國省錢大作戰 - Less $$ can be more 300
難忘的師長
引言：從漢寶德老師談其他老師 305
陳其寬老師 310
高禩瑾院長 314
劉振老師 322
劉振老師紀念獎 Liu Cheng Award 328
紀念 吳玉印（Yuin Wu）老師 330
王錦堂老師 334
張忠樸先生 338
附錄(二) 從統計制程管制到實驗設計（蔡坤祥 投影片） 339
***
U.S. Rejects G.M.’s Call for Help in a Merger
Officials were reluctant to broaden the $700 billion rescue program to include industrial companies or to play a part in a merger that could cost thousands of jobs.
Essay
How Detroit Drove Into a Ditch
The financial crisis has brought the U.S. auto industry to a breaking point, but the trouble began long ago. Paul Ingrassia on disastrous decisions, flawed leadership and what the Motor City needs to do to survive.
By PAUL INGRASSIAWith little fanfare, a new car factory opened in America earlier this month. The new Honda assembly plant in Greensburg, Ind., will produce 200,000 compact Civic models annually after reaching full capacity late next year. The contrast couldn't be starker between Detroit's woes and the continuing U.S. expansion of Japanese, German and Korean car companies -- in both market share and manufacturing capacity. There are two American auto industries, one generally thriving and the other drastically shrinking.
The shrinking is accelerating dramatically. Just yesterday Chrysler said it would ax 25% of its white-collar employees, about 5,000 people, next month. General Motors is cutting thousands more jobs and a variety of management benefits, including matching contributions to retirement savings plans. The two ailing car companies are exploring a possible merger in hopes of reaping the synergies that so infamously eluded the DaimlerChrysler union a decade ago. Last summer GM sought to merge with Ford, only to be rebuffed. Billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian started selling his stake in Ford last week after the value of his investment plunged by two-thirds since he bought the stock last spring. All this indicates the extent of Detroit's desperation. The Detroit Three (no longer the Big Three) are adamantly denying bankruptcy rumors, but there's no denying that their very survival hangs in the balance.
This situation doesn't stem from the recent meltdown in banking and the markets. GM, Ford and Chrysler have been losing billions since 2005, when the U.S. economy was still healthy. The financial crisis does, however, greatly exacerbate Detroit's woes. As car sales plunge -- both in the U.S. and in Detroit's once-booming overseas markets -- it's becoming nearly impossible for the companies to cut costs fast enough to keep pace with the evaporation of their revenue. All three companies, once the very symbol of American economic might, need new capital, but their options for raising it are limited.
Domestic carmakers have produced a long line of memorable vehicles, but not all have been winners. Enlarge the image to see a chart of some of Detroit's design successes and failures from the past 50 years.
In all this lies a tale of hubris, missed opportunities, disastrous decisions and flawed leadership of almost biblical proportions. In fact, for the last 30 years Detroit has gone astray, repented, gone astray and repented again in a cycle not unlike the Israelites in the Book of Exodus.
It wasn't that American auto executives were always malicious and stupid while the Japanese were always enlightened and smart. Japanese car companies have made plenty of mistakes, most recently Toyota's ill-timed move into full-sized pickup trucks and SUVs. But just as America didn't understand the depth of ethnic and religious divisions in Iraq, Detroit failed to grasp -- or at least to address -- the fundamental nature of its Japanese competition. Japan's car companies, and more recently the Germans and Koreans, gained a competitive advantage largely by forging an alliance with American workers.
Detroit, meanwhile, has remained mired in mutual mistrust with the United Auto Workers union. While the suspicion has abated somewhat in recent years, it never has disappeared -- which is why Detroit's factories remain vastly more cumbersome to manage than the factories of foreign car companies in the U.S.
The result of this burden, and of other failures, has been catastrophic. Because of it, Detroit remains saddled with a cost structure that prevents making profits on any vehicles besides gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs. That was fine during the SUV boom, just as owning Enron stock was terrific until that infamous company crashed. But then Enron stockholders who hadn't diversified their portfolios were wiped out. Now Detroit lacks a diversified source of profits -- i.e. small cars, midsize sedans, etc. -- and is scrambling to avoid a similar fate. It's highly unlikely that all three companies will survive.
Workers at a General Motors plant assemble the Pontiac Solstice in 2005.
Two incidents in 1936 and 1937 formed this lasting labor-management divide: the sit-down strike at GM's factories in Flint, Mich., and the Battle of the Overpass in Detroit, in which Ford goons beat up union organizers. But the United Auto Workers prevailed, and as the GM-Ford-Chrysler oligopoly emerged in the 1940s, the union gained a labor monopoly in American auto factories. As costs increased, the companies routinely passed them on to U.S. consumers, who had virtually no alternatives in buying cars.
That's how things stood entering the 1970s, a decade that brought America Watergate, defeat in Vietnam, two oil crises, inflation, stagflation, the Iran hostage crisis and malaise. (Not to mention "The Brady Bunch" and bell-bottom pants.) In Detroit, amid worker alienation and the "blue-collar blues," Chevies, Fords and Plymouths rattled, rusted and rolled over -- and those were the good ones. The Ford Pinto's gas tank was prone to explode into flames when the car was hit from the rear, making the Pinto the poster product for corporate callousness. In 1978, after three Indiana girls burned to death when their Pinto got rear-ended, Ford became the first company to be indicted for reckless homicide. The company later was acquitted, but public opinion judged the Pinto guilty.
For all the Pinto's infamy, perhaps no car better captured America's decade-long haplessness than the pug-ugly AMC Gremlin, which debuted in 1970 and died -- mercifully -- in 1980. The Gremlin's shape, fittingly, was first sketched out by an American Motors designer on the back of a Northwest Airlines air-sickness bag. On Aug. 20, 1979, 18-year-old Brad Alty, fresh out of high school in Mechanicsburg, Ohio, was driving his Gremlin to work when the car broke down. He was two-and-a-half hours late to his first day on the job at a new motorcycle factory that Honda Motor was opening in central Ohio.
For the next few weeks, Mr. Alty and his 63 co-workers did little but sweep floors and paint them with yellow lines. Then they started building three to five motorcycles a day. And at the end of each day they would disassemble each bike, piece by piece, to evaluate the workmanship. Mr. Alty hated it, and he kept getting grief from his older brother for working for a Japanese company. "I thought I had made a mistake by going to work there," he recalled recently. "It was like, 'What the heck am I doing here?' "
But Mr. Alty stuck with it, and Honda stuck with him. Honda's real goal was to build cars in America, but the motorcycle plant allowed it to test the mettle of American workers for a modest investment. The workers passed the test. Honda started building Accords in Ohio in November 1982. Ironically, some U.S. Honda dealers actually protested that they wanted to sell only Accords made in Japan. But the quality of the Ohio-made cars was soon confirmed.
Nissan, Toyota and other Japanese car companies soon started building factories in America, followed by German and Korean auto makers. There are now 16 foreign-owned assembly plants in the U.S., and many more that build engines, transmissions and other components. The UAW hasn't organized many of them, the main exceptions being plants that began as partnerships between a U.S. and Japanese auto maker, where the union was "grandfathered" in. As Detroit's oligopoly was broken, so was the UAW's labor monopoly in the auto industry. The big winner was the car-buying public.
Meanwhile, in the same year that Honda started building cars in Ohio, General Motors asked the UAW for wage concessions to help ease the company's financial straits. But on the same day that UAW members voted approval, GM Chairman Roger B. Smith unveiled a new formula that made it easier for him and other executives to earn bonuses. It was a historic blunder.
In 1987, when I was this newspaper's Detroit bureau chief, Mr. Smith asked me to tour several GM factories to view first-hand how the company's relationship with its workers had improved. At the GM engine plant in Tonawanda, N.Y., near Buffalo, I got glowing reports about the dawn of a new spirit of cooperation. Then I asked to visit the men's room, and was stunned to see that there were two: one for hourly workers, and a separate one for management. I used the hourly men's loo.
Meanwhile, Mr. Smith was trying to transform GM with a high-tech spending splurge. At GM's factory in Hamtramck, Mich., the automated guided vehicles that were supposed to replaced old-fashioned fork lifts sat as still as stones, because the programming algorithms were too complicated. The spray-painting robots turned their nozzles on each other instead of the cars.
While GM was going astray, Ford and Chrysler were in repentance mode in the 1980s. Chrysler staged a historic comeback from near-death under its charismatic CEO, Lee Iacocca. In 1984 the company launched a new product called the mini-van, which supplanted family station wagons almost overnight. With the Taurus, Ford re-established Detroit's lead over the import brands in styling, evoking the days when Americans rushed down to a dealer to see the latest automotive designs, and the company forged better relations with the UAW. All three companies suffered in the Gulf War recession, especially GM, which posted a then-record $4.5 billion loss in 1991. The company's board ousted CEO Robert Stempel. But by the mid-1990s all three companies were posting record profits thanks to the boom in SUVs, which the Japanese didn't make at the time. The profit surge prompted Germany's Daimler-Benz to buy Chrysler, which owns the iconic Jeep brand, for some $36 billion in 1998.
As the new millennium began, Detroit envisioned a prosperous second century. In June 2000, GM's confident new CEO, Rick Wagoner, invited journalists to a resort in Italy's Alpine lakes to describe a corporate future of "fewer cars, more trucks," as the Detroit Free Press wrote. Ford's CEO Jacques Nasser upgraded the décor on the corporate jets and removed the company's blue-oval logo from the outside of corporate headquarters while the Ford Taurus -- once the best-selling car in America -- was falling further behind the Toyota Camry and the Honda Accord. It was going-astray time again. These days, Detroit's styling advantage has largely disappeared, and excitement over new designs is reserved for iPhones.
The debilitating management-union relationship largely remains, however. In 1998, after GM moved some equipment at factories in Flint against the UAW's wishes, workers went on strike for 54 days, costing GM $3 billion. While such headline-making confrontations have become rare, small-scale impasses occur regularly.
Not terribly long ago, says a Ford manager who must remain unnamed, Ford dispatched a team of welding experts to a factory to explore efficiency moves. The plant's union leaders, fearing layoffs might result, refused to meet with the team, and the effort came to naught. UAW leaders aren't bad people; far from it. But when everything is a negotiation, many things don't get done. (Just ask any parent.)
Several years ago Ford even considered dropping cars altogether because they weren't profitable, and focusing entirely on trucks. Then in 2005, Hurricane Katrina and growing oil demand from China and India sent gasoline prices soaring and SUV sales plunging. GM lost $10.6 billion that year. Ford topped that by losing $12.7 billion in 2006. Last summer Daimler gave up on Chrysler, selling it to private-equity powerhouse Cerberus for about one-fourth of what it had paid to buy Chrysler. Last fall the UAW approved significant wage and benefit concessions, but they won't kick in until 2010. That might be too late. GM lost $15.5 billion in this year's second quarter, Ford lost $8.7 billion, and further losses are coming. (Closely held Chrysler, of course, doesn't report financial results.)
What now? Cerberus is trying to sell Chrysler. The most logical buyer would be Nissan, India's Tata or some other profitable foreign car company seeking to expand in the U.S. But desperation doesn't breed logic, which is why General Motors might become the buyer. It's difficult to see how this deal would make any sense for GM, which already has too many brands (eight) and must cut billions from its cost base. Adding more brands (Chrysler has three) and more costs would be charging headlong in the wrong direction, and distract GM's management from putting its own house in order.
GM is bleeding cash so quickly that it likely will run out next summer without a sizeable transfusion. Selling assets, selling stock or adding debt will be enormously difficult for the company. But unless one of those things happens it's either a government bailout or bankruptcy for General Motors.
Ford's cash position is somewhat better than GM's, and the company seems to have more options. Its Volvo subsidiary and its 33% stake in Mazda are valuable assets that could be sold. But Mr. Kerkorian's apparent about-face on Ford is unsettling. It's possible that the blue-blooded Ford family is just as happy to see the Las Vegas billionaire cash in his chips, but his move could shut off a potential source of additional investment that Ford might need in its quest to survive.
But to thrive, instead of just survive, Detroit will have to use the brains of its workers instead of just their bodies, and the UAW will have to allow it. Two weeks ago some automation equipment broke down at the Honda factory in Marysville, Ohio, but employees rushed to the scene and devised a temporary solution. There were no negotiations with shop stewards, no parsing of job descriptions. Instead of losing an entire shift of production, Honda lost just 150 cars. The person overseeing Marysville's assembly operations is Brad Alty, still with Honda after nearly 30 years. These days, instead of a Gremlin, he's driving a Honda Pilot -- made at a Honda factory in Alabama.
Paul Ingrassia is the former Detroit bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. He is writing a book about America's car culture.
Write to Paul Ingrassia at ingrassiap@gmail.com
*****
Welfare for Detroit
Should lower-paid workers help subsidize those averaging $56,650 at GM?
Monday, October 27, 2008; Page A12AFTER YEARS of decline, U.S. auto companies face the double whammy of a credit crisis and a recession. Car and truck sales fell 26.6 percent in September, the first month since 1993 in which fewer than 1 million vehicles moved off the lots. General Motors, threatened with bankruptcy and burning through $1 billion in cash reserves per month, is groping for a merger with Chrysler. Ford's stock is down more than 70 percent in the past year, and investor Kirk Kerkorian is dumping his shares.
The $25 billion federal loan approved by Congress on Sept. 25 may not reach Detroit for six to 18 months because of red tape. So Detroit's allies are pushing for waivers of the usual rules and, perhaps, another $25 billion before the end of the year. And why not? Everyone else seems to be getting a bailout these days. Hundreds of thousands of people depend on Detroit for their jobs, directly or indirectly.
Well, we can think of several objections. First, there is the question of whether the U.S. government should be picking winners and losers in a business such as this. It's one thing to bail out the financial sector, whose product -- credit -- is essentially fungible and on which all other businesses depend. Automobiles, however, are not interchangeable, and Congress can't substitute its specific technological and aesthetic preferences for those of the market. What if we lend Detroit $25 billion and still nobody buys its cars?
Second, this bailout taxes the less well-off to protect the relatively privileged. The average individual General Motors production worker, whose job would be saved by the bailout, makes $56,650 per year, according to the Center for Automotive Research, and that doesn't count better-paid, white-collar types. Meanwhile, half of all households-- which typically include more than one earner -- make less than $50,000 per year. Where's the justice in that?
Congress approved $7,500 tax credits for purchasers of GM's much-touted plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt, built to run 40 miles on a single electric charge. That would knock the net cost of the four-seat Volt, due out in late 2010, down to $32,500 -- not much less than a basic Cadillac CTS costs now. Even then, it could take a decade of Volt driving to recoup the difference in purchase prices between it and the far cheaper Toyota Prius. Assuming a few well-heeled drivers take that deal, why should poorer people be taxed to enable them?
The downfall of the American auto industry is indeed a tragedy. But the automakers and the United Auto Workers have only themselves to blame for much of it. For years, they pursued protectionism against foreign competitors rather than tackle them head-on. The automakers say that they need $25 billion from Congress to offset the additional costs of tough new fuel-efficiency standards. Perhaps they wouldn't be in that situation if they had accepted such standards a long time ago and retooled to meet them, rather than persisting in the more familiar, and profitable, business of making gas guzzlers.
The downfall of the American auto industry is indeed a tragedy. But the automakers and the United Auto Workers have only themselves to blame for much of it. For years, they pursued protectionism against foreign competitors rather than tackle them head-on. The automakers say that they need $25 billion from Congress to offset the additional costs of tough new fuel-efficiency standards. Perhaps they wouldn't be in that situation if they had accepted such standards a long time ago and retooled to meet them, rather than persisting in the more familiar, and profitable, business of making gas guzzlers.
We would all have been better off if the federal government had enacted a higher gas tax so that the Big Three could have planned production on that basis. A stiffer gas tax, rebatable in some form to consumers, would still be the best way to guarantee a long-term shift to more economical cars. Alas, there's a limit to how much taxpayers can spend ensuring that such cars get built in Detroit.
Japan Carmakers' Swift Marketing ManeuversTina Wang, 10.27.08, 5:58 AM ET
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The road has lately become more treacherous for Japanese automakers, facing a global slowdown. But cutting back is not their only response. Faced with slumping sales in their most significant overseas markets, they are expanding down paths of least resistance, namely, into China and into lines of cars that sell more readily under current economic circumstances. While ailing U.S. automakers mull over mergers or asset sell-offs to stave off bankruptcy, Japanese car manufacturers appear versatile and flexible enough to adapt to bleak demand conditions.
Still-burgeoning demand in emerging markets and cheaper manufacturing costs are drawing Japanese automakers to China. Toyota Motor (nyse: TM - news - people ) said Monday it plans to build a $583.7 million plant in the northeastern Chinese city of Changchun, in partnership with FAW Group. The plant's expected output of 100,000 Corollas a year would bring Toyota's output in China to around 1 million cars a year.中国第一汽车集团公司
Not coincidentally, the company aims to sell 1 million cars a year in China around 2010. Mitsubishi Motors (other-otc: MMTOF - news - people ), which will slash production in its Japanese plants by up to 100,000 vehicles between November and March, said it plans to set up its own $31.8 million joint venture in Shanghai.
Japanese automakers are also redirecting production toward compact, fuel-efficient cars, changing course after ill-timed ventures into pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles. Honda Motor (nyse: HMC - news - people ) said on Monday that it had increased output by 9.6% in September, compared with Sept. 2007, to 360,453 vehicles. Production rose on the strength of demand for smaller cars, replacing minivans and SUVs. That followed similar shifts by Nissan Motor (other-otc: NSANY - news - people ) and South Korea's Hyundai Motor (other-otc: HYMLF - news - people ). (See "Nissan, Hyundai: Flashy Cars A Non-Starter.") Honda also said it had doubled production capacity in its joint venture with Dongfeng Motor (other-otc: DNFGF - news - people ), bolstering its output in China by 6.1%, to 80,130 vehicles.
A slump in U.S. demand has made times tough for Japanese automakers. Toyota Motor last week posted a quarterly drop in sales for the first time in seven years. Vehicles sold declined in the July-September quarter by 4.3%, compared with last year's corresponding period, to 2.2 million vehicles. It also slashed its global sales forecast for 2008 by 350,000 vehicles, to 9.5 million cars.
In Tokyo trading Monday, Toyota Motor shares were down 220 yen ($2.33), or 6.9%, to 2,980 yen ($31.63). Honda Motor shares were down 178 yen ($1.89), or 8.95%, to 1,812 yen ($19.23). Mitsubishi Motors shares were down 11 yen (12 cents), or 9.7%, to 102 yen ($1.08).
日本小型車きびきび 小さな「iQ」
トヨタの危機打開策とは
豊富な資金力と低燃費車へのシフトで景気減速に対応
- 2008年10月27日 月曜日
Ian Rowley （BusinessWeek誌、東京支局特派員）
米国時間2008年10月20日更新 「How Toyota Plans to Beat the Downturn」
2005年6月の就任以来、トヨタ自動車（TM）の渡辺捷昭社長は事あるごとに、危機感喪失の危険性を警告していた（BusinessWeek誌の記事を参照：2007年3月5日「Katsuaki Watanabe: Fighting To Stay Humble」）。だが最近になるまで、社員にそうした意識を浸透させるのは至難の業だった。というのも、トヨタはこれまで右肩上がりの成長を続けてきたからだ。
昨年度（2008年3月期）の新車販売台数は890万台と5年間で32％増加。純利益は53％増加の170億ドル（1兆7178億円）となった。今年度は、米ゼネラル・モーターズ（GM）を抜いて自動車業界首位に躍り出る見通しだ。
とはいえ最近では、渡辺社長が株価を指差しただけで社員は気を引き締めるようになった。年初来、トヨタの株価は37％下落。最近の販売台数も、ビッグスリー（米自動車大手3社）をはるかに上回っているとはいえ、堅調な販売というにはほど遠い数字だ。
9月期の北米での販売台数は10％落ち込んでおり、欧州市場でも低迷が続く。市場シェアが40％を超える日本でも、新車販売台数は過去20年余りで最低 だった昨年の数字をさらに下回る見通しだ。今年の販売台数40％増を目指す中国においてでさえ、トヨタ経営陣の期待ほどに数字は伸びていない。
警鐘を鳴らすアナリストもいる。日興シティ証券の自動車アナリスト松島憲之氏は、10月10日付の投資家向けリポートで、トヨタについて「収益が急激かつ大幅に悪化する」と予想。「必要なのは、従来の路線を転換し、然るべき売上高の確保に向けた新たな戦略づくり」と述べている。
松島氏はトヨタの2009年3月期の営業利益予想を、前年比50％減となる110億ドルに下方修正している。これはトヨタ自身の予想を50億ドルも下回る。
資金力を背景にしたゼロ金利キャンペーン
投資家にとってはそろそろ引き際が来たかというと、そうとも言い切れない。たとえ今年の収益が半減したとしても、依然100億ドル（約1兆円）を 超える営業利益が見込めるからだ。加えて、安定した財務状況、200億ドル超の現金、数々の新車計画など、経済危機を乗り切るうえで競合他社よりも優位に 立てる条件がトヨタには備わっている。
「トヨタ幹部が何かを決断した時は、資金調達に悩むことなく即座に行動に移すことが可能だ」と、ベルギーのKBCグループ傘下のKBC証券東京支社アナリスト、アンドリュー・フィリップス氏は言う。
今のところ、ビッグスリーに比べるとトヨタの置かれた状況はそれほど深刻ではない（BusinessWeek.comの記事を参照：2008年10月7日「Can GM and Ford Scrape By?」）。
この状況を維持するために北米市場で最も頼りになるのは、豊富な資金力だろう。6月末の時点で、トヨタは米国の金融子会社の現金30億ドル（約3000億円）で販売不振の穴埋めをしている。
また、景気減速が深刻化し在庫が積み上がる中、トヨタは「カローラ」「カムリ」、大型ピックアップトラックの「タンドラ」など11車種を対象に、 金利なしで新車をローン販売する「ゼロ金利」キャンペーンを10月3日に開始した。今回は約1カ月の予定だが、ゼロ金利の提供期間を延長した場合、中古車 価格が下落し、ブランドイメージに傷がつく恐れがあると評論家は指摘する。
American carmakers
On the edge
Nov 13th 2008
From The Economist print edition
After the bank bail-out, it is now Detroit’s carmakers who are pleading for help
IF NOTHING else, the revelation by General Motors (GM) on November 7th that it is in danger of running out of cash before the end of the year has concentrated minds. The reaction within the embattled car industry, and in Washington, DC, has been the same: we knew it was bad, but we did not know it was that bad. Ford is in a similar position, although its cash should hold out for a few months longer.
As for Chrysler, the smallest and weakest of Detroit’s Big Three, the precise state of its finances are harder to gauge because it is privately held. But the increasingly desperate attempts by Cerberus Capital Management, the private-equity firm that owns 80% of Chrysler, to offload some or all of it to another carmaker (GM said on November 7th that it had walked away from such a deal) suggest that its future as an independent entity is all but over.
What will happen next? The shareholders have been more or less wiped out, the credit markets are closed and neither GM nor Ford has any non-core assets that anyone wants to buy, with the possible exception of Ford’s 33% stake in Mazda, a profitable Japanese carmaker. The North American car market should come back strongly in 2010 or 2011, but for all practical purposes, that is light-years away: North American sales are running at their lowest levels since the early 1980s, when the population was 50m smaller. There are just two broad options: either the federal government steps in to save Ford and GM (Chrysler is probably unsalvageable) or America’s two biggest car firms must seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
In many ways, Chapter 11 was designed for just such a contingency. For all their present agonies, both Ford and GM have good long-term prospects. They have relatively healthy businesses in Europe and have been doing well in emerging markets, such as China, where there is vast potential.
They are also nearing the final stage of a lengthy and painful restructuring of their North American operations. Two million units of capacity have been stripped out; factories are being converted to produce more fuel-efficient cars; and a landmark deal with the United Auto Workers union in 2007 paved the way to cutting $1,000 of costs on every car they make from next year. “The river they are swimming across has been getting wider and deeper, but the pot of gold on the other side has been getting bigger as well,” says David Cole of the Center for Automotive Research.
However, there is considerable scepticism both within the industry and among analysts as to whether Chapter 11 is a way forward for GM and Ford (though it may, some concede, be more appropriate for Chrysler). Mr Cole says that “it would kill them in the market”. The fear is that rather than give the firms a breathing space in which they could complete the restructuring of their operations and extract further concessions from the union, Chapter 11 would set off a downward spiral.
Consumer surveys that suggest that 80-90% of prospective customers would abandon the products of a carmaker that had filed for bankruptcy protection. When airlines went into Chapter 11, most of their passengers stuck with them, reasoning they would be at least be in business long enough for tickets bought for trips just a few weeks away to be honoured.
Cars are different. A car is the most expensive purchase many consumers make, and by buying a car they also enter into a long-term contract. Buyers expect their 60,000-mile warranties to be honoured, parts to be kept supplied and their dealers not to have disappeared. Used-car values are also a critical part of the deal. If the firm that made the car has gone bust, it becomes virtually unsellable secondhand.
A further reason why Chapter 11 might not work for the carmakers, says Mark Oline, an analyst at Fitch Ratings, is that they have very little scope for further cost-cutting. “They’re not being crushed by wage and benefit costs—it’s about revenue and products now,” he says. Bankruptcy would do nothing to speed up the introduction of vital new models.
Those arguments may have weighed heavily with both Barack Obama, the president-elect, and the Democrats in Congress, who are moving towards sanctioning a bail-out package. They have gained added force from estimates of the economic fallout that could follow bankruptcy. Rod Lache, an analyst at Deutsche Bank, believes it would imperil many of the component-makers in North America, which in turn would hit the foreign-owned “transplant” factories that make up the rest of America’s car industry.
Mr Cole’s firm has modelled a scenario in which Detroit’s production falls by 50%. He estimates that in the first year that would cost 2.5m jobs: 240,000 from the carmakers themselves; 795,000 from suppliers and 1.4m from other firms indirectly affected. The cost in transfer payments and lost taxes would exceed $100 billion over three years. Some of Mr Cole’s assumptions are likely to be too pessimistic, but his blood-curdling forecast and others like it have helped to convince legislators that the $50 billion of help that the carmakers are asking for would be cheap at the price.
How and when the rescue funds will arrive is less certain. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, has called for a bill giving the carmakers access to the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP) established to shore up failing banks. But Hank Paulson, the treasury secretary, said on November 12th that this was not what the TARP had been intended for. Some are calling for a repeat of the scheme used to bail out Chrysler in 1979. On that occasion, in exchange for a loan of $1.5 billion, the government received warrants that it eventually sold for a profit.
A “lame duck” session of Congress could be convened as early as next week to pass the necessary legislation. President Bush might still veto it, but is less likely to do so if Mr Obama backs the plan. His recent victory is at least one piece of luck to have come the carmakers’ way.
紐約時報社論
Saving Detroit From Itself
We have seen a lot of posturing, but we haven’t heard a lot of sense in the debate over whether the government should spend even more to bail out Detroit’s foundering automakers.
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Senator Richard Shelby, a Republican of Alabama, is wrong when he says that the troubles of the Big Three are “not a national problem.” The Detroit companies support nearly 250,000 workers and more than a million retirees and dependents, as well as millions of workers at part makers and dealerships. A messy bankruptcy filing by any of the big car companies, in the midst of this recession, would likely cost the government and the economy more than trying to keep them afloat.
At the same time, Congressional Democrats and President-elect Barack Obama, who are pushing for many billions worth of emergency aid for the nation’s least-competent carmakers, must ensure that tough conditions are attached to any rescue package. If not, the money will surely be wasted.
This goes beyond firing top management, forbidding the payment of dividends to stockholders and putting limits on executive pay — all necessary steps. The government should insist on a complete restructuring of any company it pours billions of public funds into.
All three car companies have been hamstrung by the legacy costs of providing pensions and health care to hundreds of thousands of retirees. But Detroit’s problems are mostly of its own making.
The automakers hitched their fate to gas-guzzling trucks, and they obstinately refused to acknowledge that oil is a finite resource and that burning it limitlessly is harming the planet. They lobbied strenuously against tighter fuel-efficiency standards. That wrongheadedness did them in as gas prices spiked and consumers flocked to energy-efficient cars made by Toyota and Honda.
It makes no sense at all to give these companies billions just so they can struggle on for a few more months down this disastrous path.
Before it approves any bailout package, Congress must insist that any company receiving government money must commit to a specific plan to improve energy efficiency. The average fuel efficiency of the American auto fleet peaked at 25.9 miles per gallon in 1987 and then leveled off as gas prices fell and the automakers churned out more sport-utility vehicles and pickups.
Last year, Detroit managed to extract a promise of $25 billion in subsidized loans from Congress in exchange for a new target of 35 m.p.g. by 2020. But the industry can do better. If Detroit were willing to make smaller cars, as European companies do, it could probably achieve a fleet-wide average of 50 m.p.g. by 2020.
The companies also are struggling under a mountain of debt. And any restructuring would mean that creditors would have to swallow a loss or accept equity — as under a regular bankruptcy filing. Restructuring would likely require more plant closures and layoffs.
Rescued car companies would almost certainly have to re-open labor agreements on pay and benefits. These steps would be painful for many workers. But they also are necessary.
Even then, there is no guarantee that these companies will survive after years of failed management. We are sure they won’t if they don’t make sweeping changes in the way they do business. If Congress is going to take the risk and invest billions more of the taxpayers’ money in the companies, it must insist on those changes.
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