The General has decided to remove approximately 200 engineering positions from the company payroll as part of GM CEO Mary Barra‘s “Winning with Simplicity” strategy, the Detroit Free Press reports.
Most of the engineers will end up with other positions at GM according to Kevin Kelly, a spokesman for the automaker who said the move will “require a small number of engineers to move to other parts of the organization over the next several months.”
Kelly also remarked that GM is “taking steps to rebalance our engineering resources to better align with our growth strategy.” The Winning with Simplicity strategy calls for GM to eliminate approximately 50 percent of its vehicle trim levels according to Barra’s statements during the Q2 2023 earnings call.
Barra added that GM is aiming for “fewer part numbers to simplify marketing, engineering, manufacturing, while maintaining the best features customers want.” GM has not revealed exactly where the 200 engineering jobs will be cut.
GM now wants to reduce costs by $3 billion rather than its previous target of $2 billion, highlighting why the engineering jobs are on the chopping block. As part of this plan, it previously eliminated other jobs, though at the time it said “a relatively small number of salaried employees and executives” were involved. Most of the eliminated jobs were in the U.S.
The automaker announced a voluntary separation program or VSP in March. This program offered one month of pay per year of service, capped at a maximum of 12 months of pay, along with a pro-rated team GM performance bonus and a few other benefits for salaried employees who had worked for The General for five years or longer. It also offered executives with two years of service their base salary plus several incentives and bonuses.
In the event, about 5,000 white collar employees took the VSP, costing GM a total of about $1 billion. The number met GM expectations and was probably enough to prevent future layoffs according to company representatives.
Less engineering jobs are needed as well, with Mary Barra highlighting the goal of GM to “reduce design and engineering expense, supplier costs, order complexity, buildable combinations and manufacturing complexity.”
Per her statements, the company will focus on “smart bundling of customer features and options” as the strategy advances.
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Comments
Engineers are cheaper in Korea and China. Has nothing to do with simplicity. Mary has to maximize her bonus.
Simplify trim levels? Would you like the 60k or 100k one?
“Less is more” always works well, especially when it ultimately translates too “less for more”… I currently have 3 GM vehicle’s sitting in my driveway, but I’ve yet to purchase a single GM product from the Barra Era… The incentive and desire to do so grows less by the day… “Less is less”…
If you have the same features, I fail to see how you are eliminating engineering. I can totally see that you will fewer pages in your brochures and web sites, since there are fewer options. Maybe GM classes web designers as “engineers”?
what they really mean: engineers couldnt figure how to make our 89k truck cost us 19999 to produce. instead it costs us 21050 to build. so they have to go. we arent a charity!
Mostly in the ice propulsion systems.
When the future is EV’s you have a screen that controls everything. And a single battery platform.
This pretty much is following Tesla’s approach.
So you cut the jobs that make your product better? 🧐 how about we reduce executives? They also have more salary to cut to begin with.
Didnt GM become americas #1 auto maker originally by “offering a car for everyone?” Why do they want to reduce trims?
Serve the customer, earn sales, not serve the short terms almighty dollar. This is the mindset that has dropped GM marketshare every year since Barra was in charge.
Engineers don’t usually make production better. Most IEs can’t understand production lines, they have a computer program that tells them how a production job should be set up. In my 23 years of experience they are often wrong.
They are going from 100’s of drivetrain configurations (various engines and transmissions) down to about 19 configurations with EV Ultium platform.
They said the Silverado EV has like 70% fewer part numbers than the ICE version.
Fewer mfg engineers are needed also as not nearly as complex to assemble with far fewer moving parts.
Winning with better vehicles and designs fell off the list of avenues a long time ago.
Sounds like all of GMs sticker packages are too complicated. They’ve been simple for a long time. Can’t get much simpler.
Yeah, and the ‘simplified’ packages are always kinda dopey, – as a for instance, if you want heated seats then you also have to get those ‘slow as molasses’ ‘automatic’ day/night rear view mirrors, instead of the quickly changeable manually flipped things that quickly got the high beams behind you out of the way.
Chrysler – when they will still around – carried this to an extreme by having all dashboards essentially the same.
There’s room for simplification at GM obviously. Every GM car you get into of the same model year is totally different – unnecessarily.
In the EV world GM is simplifying some things… Ultium power train, batteries and heat pump heaters for everything. Only 48 and 80 ampere home car charging facilities…. I would have chosen 32 and 80 to match the ‘220’ charging cord they include with every ev other than the basic BOLT EV, but that is a nit-pick.
Of course, Hyundai, Kia, and FORD now provide absolutely nothing at all to recharge at home.. Optional stuff will be sold by the dealerships. Tesla gives you next to nothing, but includes a J1772 adapter so their up-until-now-non-standard connector can be used at ‘industry standard’ public charging stations… Of course, now – everyone else has thrown in the towel and TESLA is the new standard. So in the future, Tesla will not provide the adapter.
So – in ‘Monkey-See, Monkey-Do’ fashion, expect GM to not provide either the 120 volt 12 amp cord with the Bolt EV and discontinuance of the 32 amp ‘110/220’ cord with the fancier vehicles.
Idk if cutting engineers is a great strategy for a brand known for bad engineering. Maybe just hire better engineers? And yes, as another poster mentioned, cutting executives is probably a better move.
It’s clear that Barra’s Bean Counters haven’t been allowing GM’s Engineers to do their jobs and, instead, insist on sub-standard, un-tested parts in many of the General’s offerings so why not fire them ?
Barra needs to be let go. Cut the number of executives by half and dump bean counters and let the engineers build a better vehicle.
With all the unsolved technology issues on the new 2023 Colorados not sure getting rid of engineering doesn’t make sense. As far as simplicity mabe do away with new technology until it is proven to work. As a life long gm owner of chevrolets I am loosing faith in the brand. Bandages instead of fixes doesn’t impress me.
dont lay off the 200 engineers…. put them on a special task force to re-engineer all the bad enginneering screw ups the last couple years … starting with transmissons
Transmissions are going away, with the transition to EVs.
My son is an engineer at GM. I hope he doesn’t get cut.
The Board can do the company and it’s customer’s the best job cut of all by axing Barra; though truth be told, it might already be too late for slumping GM.
Uh huh…GREAT idea! I remember GM’s CEO John Smith employed the same strategy, making all the GM brands look very similar by using common body parts. His “brilliant” decision just about put ’em out of business. History simply repeating itself under the guise of new buzz phrases.
These jobs are not going away, they’re just being sent to India, China, and Mexico.
The big three have built junk for years now. The unions should be ashamed of the quality they are building. Not asking for huge raises.