GM is shifting its focus to a streamlined product approach, reducing its design and engineering expenses, supplier costs, order complexity, buildable combinations, and manufacturing complexity. The strategy is dubbed “Winning with Simplicity,” and is expected to save the automaker millions of dollars in expenses. That includes an estimated $200 million in 2024 alone.
The insight into the savings realized by GM’s latest Winning with Simplicity strategy was provided by company CEO Mary Barra, who explained how the strategy was saving The General money during the recent Q4 2023 earnings presentation.
“We are beginning to see savings from Winning with Simplicity, and all of our current and future programs have embraced this very important way of designing products,” Barra said. “Each team is responsible for creating trim series that make vehicles easy to order, with the content customers want, and far fewer standalone options.”
The strategy includes more equipment as standard in vehicle trim series, a move expected to delete “thousands of unique part numbers and dozens of software releases.”
“For example, we have eliminated over 1,000 selectable options across our current and near-term product programs, which is reducing hardware, software, ordering, and manufacturing complexity, and importantly, all the costs associated with them,” Barra explained.
According to Barra, the Winning with Simplicity strategy is expected to save GM about $200 million over the course of the 2024 calendar year.
“To be clear, we’re talking about $200 million of savings to execute the same product plan,” Barra clarified. “These savings will grow over time as we apply the discipline to future products like our next-generation full-size pickups.”
Last August, General Motors announced that it would cut 200 engineering positions as part of the Winning with Simplicity strategy. Additionally, the second-generation Chevy Bolt EV is expected not to be a complete clean-sheet redesign, but will rather include updates with the latest GM Ultium battery and GM Ultium Drive motor technologies.
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Comments
Boring! Be a good little comrade and conform to your slot.
Less choice = less customers. Barra hasn’t met a customer base or market share number yet she can’t erode further!
Nowhere does the article say less choice. It gets pricey stocking 100 choices when only 43 of them sell. You just wasted money on 57 things….it adds up.
It’s the 80/20 rule, 80% of the volume comes from 20% of the products. reducing choices for products that have very little demand saves the business money and puts less pressure on price increases.
Less variations means better build quality, more standard equipment is always welcome , IE heated steering wheel in the new Trax and Equinox now standard,
With this strategy we as consumers potentially get a better product and GM is more successful,
Its a win win!!
Tell us what part of the “Streamlined Product Approach” you understood….
Yes, I agree that’s my point. It may save GM lots of money but it reduces my choices.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news for you but Tesla has less choices and it has been working out just fine for them. Your choices are literally Black, White, Gray, Blue, or Red. More range or less range. That’s it. I’m not saying GM should do the same. But I have been saying that eliminating the Premier trims on the Chevrolet models may not be a bad idea as it should push people who want the premium (but not Cadillac full pay to play luxury) experience over to Buick. GM has long suffered from having too much to the point that their models would compete internally.
The Japanese brought this winning strategy to the US in the late seventies and look at the gains!
Simplify offerings, pack more standard features into each trim level for efficiency and value. Also reduces assembly line time.
PS Keep a name, continue to improve, and retain brand identity for decades.
you can not “order” what you want from toyota. They send the dealers what they want to. Best you can get from toyota is something close to the build that you built on paper. It is up to the dealers to wheel and deal with other dealers to get close to what you want. This is not a “winning” strategy. I purposely did not go with Toyota for this reason. Jamming stuff into a trim level and calling it a day is not good customer service. Everyone is different, but all companies cater to the masses. Hence we have 4 door pickup trucks as the norm. I would prefer 2 door pickup, but with options of the higher trim models. That pink elephant does not exist.
Right on
Toyota and Honda and others have been doing this for 40 years. Mary B just catching on
Kinda like GM being late to efficient manufacturing driven by Deming’s principles. I concede they did learn something from the NUMMI organization (Toyota/GM) which jointly produced vehicles in Fremont California.
except that the japanese didnt have self destructing engines and cracking roofs and draining batteries and and and…………..
there is nothing simple about gm. what they mean to say is built cheap. cost cutting through cheapness is what they want to say but they cant
WTF? What? What does “Comrade” have to do with a company taking steps to save money? You guys are gonna have to let the ’80’s movie villains go……..Mother Russia no longer exists….
AVW…LOL…I just had to.
OMG that is the best screen name I’ve seen in, like, forever! LOL
It’s more of being told what to do and what to drive by our government and now by manufacturers instead of being able to make our own decisions and choose what we want. That’s how it works with communism.
So next you’re going to suggest the government is forcing you to drive? Why don’t you just say no to any car and get a horse!
Why is Communism the go-to? Why should a business be shamed into stocking 100’s of parts that don’t get sold just on the off-chance that 1% of the customer base MIGHT buy it? That’s not good business sense and it has NOTHING to do with Communism. We need to stop throwing the C-word out there “just because” we don’t like someone or something, it weakens what it means to the point that when it does actually rear its ugly head we have no idea what to watch for. Just say “I dislike the lack of choice” and leave the 80’s movie villain behind.
Combinations have been restricted for years at most MFG and even at GM.
Most people buy three different packages and it cost money to offer the ones no one buys.
Case in point when they made Power windows standard in all cars it was cheaper to build them all that way vs offering a limited number of hand cranks.
It is because of things like this GM is making money and offering dividends even in a tough year.
The years of COPO cars and order every single special details are over.
Even in the plants they will paint a number of cars the same color at the same time to make it cheaper but keep quality up.
This was a process the Japanize had to use as you could not order cars from their country easily the way you want it. They offered packages and benefited by the savings and quality.
Higher end cars like Cadillac and Corvette you will be able to do over rides if you pay more.
Understandable choice to make.
C9 will be on the same platform with the improved V8.
Now, what will GM do with the Camaro return? (we know it’s happening). VSS-R platform? They won’t bring the alpha platform back after it retires in 2026.
Camaro needs an E-Ray drivetrain type of trim.
Camaro was discontinued… January was the last month of production for this Sixth Generation… No Seventh apparently.
As far as Toyota goes, as I explained in another comment that at times they have gone too far insisting on packaging popular items, and have solved the problem by making the item standard; I know I walked away from a Toyota sale since I didn’t want to pay excessively for (to me) useless gobbledygook.
Many others apparently felt exactly the same way and the dealers let their dissatisfaction be known.
VSSR would be the solution to many of gm’s product lineup holes including Camaro
In terms of streamlining a Camaro? Richer/techie interior potential trims: ZL1, Z28, SS, LT1, LT. Cheap interior: Z28 w/1LE, LT1, LT, LS. Maybe just 2 fascias and RS is SS look on LT1<. Maybe LT1< are auto trans only, and Z28-1LE &LS are stick only. Streamlining isn’t going to be easy there.
Less choices = less sales = less profits
More choice = higher cost = lower sales
@GMC fan. more choices = the person making the choice gets to choose what they want and will be willing to pay for it. less choice = you will take what they force you to buy and like it.
Take a look at how many choices there were in 1969, and look at the sales numbers. As far as stocking the parts, don’t they still do just in time delivery??
I’d rather choose what I want than be told what I can have, not a comrade yet.
Sorry to be that guy, but for the author and editor of this article, they really need to understand the difference between less and fewer.
Less trim levels, less standalone options, less part numbers
It’s hard to take a news outlet seriously that can’t get this correct.
But on car related note, I’ve always felt that GM had the fewest standalone options compared to their competitors. The fact that they’re further reducing this is disappointing. It made sense for Ford to do it with the F-150. But for Chevy to do it? Are we still going to be able to pick colors?
I’ll believe it when the pages of Corvette interiors is pared down to just two choices…
Corvette due to it’s nature will probably continue to have lots of options. A lot of those options are body related which are easier to deal with compared to different displays, electronics, power options, etc. Imagine an Equinox with a base trim, mid trim and a performance trim. With the only options being a sunroof.
FEWER, not “less”
C’mon people, it’s not that difficult
How many of the new upgraded packages will include safety features that SHOULD have been included when I upgraded to the 2LT option on my C8. Better yet ate those safety features going to be free over the air upgrades fir us? Tomg
I really don’t see this as reducing part numbers… maybe RPOs and trim levels, but if they are just packing more options into each trim level, the parts are all still there. Unless, of course, they are trimming options too…. Just seems like more corporate double talk. And they are way behind the Japanese with this idea, it’s really nothing new. Not like Mary ever had an original idea anyway.
$200 million savings is a pittance for a company the size of General Motors. If this change means base models get more options at no additional cost, then I’m all in.
That said, the single most exciting thing GM could do to increase options is to add more paint and interior color choices. In 1941, one could order a new Cadillac in any of 200 different paint color combinations. Why can’t we do that today?
Well if you have an extra “pittance” lying around, I’ll take it off your hands. LOL $200 million in savings may not seem like much, but it’s all those “pittances” that add up and save the company a lot of money.
From a business standpoint this makes sense. But as a consumer, am I wrong to think all this does is force me into more packages that I don’t need/want for expensive upcharges?
Yes, I’ll get more standard. But that will raise the base price of the vehicle even though GM saves. And now I can no longer purchase specific options individually, I get forced into an entire package that adds extra cost for things.
That’s not necessarily anything new, sounds like it will proliferate even more in the future.
Well JT, although I own 3 purchased late model GM vehicles (oldest is a 2022 model year), GM quality is such that I feel no compelling need to purchase another if things just are not right…..
It would be better if people in general just walked away from a sale, since I’m sure part of the SCHTICK by marketing is to include in each package pricey crap that no one would ever buy individually, and thereby the overall markup on the car increases.
To illustrate: My 2023 LYRIQ has plenty of crap I would never buy and would never use, and some of which, like the CHOREGRAPHED LIGHTING (Christmas tree lights on the front of the car whenever you approach it, which happens all the time in my home with an attached garage) – that the end result is that the battery drains far faster in this car than my other electrics since it runs the silly lights all the time I’m home.
You might reasonably ask – why did I buy it if it has bells and whistles i’ll never use, such as gesture operated features and a ridiculously sized 80 ampere charger that you couldn’t get in a $120,000 HUMMER EV which incidentally actually needed it since the truck is so inefficient?
Its because the car overall is attractive, and is some $10,000 CHEAPER than a lesser equipped 2024 model – which has two big things I DON’T like – namely 5G internet and very funny door handles… The motorized push out standard 4 doors on my 2023 i DO LIKE.
Win for GM, loss for customers. To get an option, customer will probably have to ad a “package,” at a much higher cost. This is already common and the reason I delayed purchasing a new vehicle for two years. Auto brands were/are differentiated based on options, quality and prices. The more similar they become, the less the customer will feel loyal to a specific brand.
Example. 14 different wheel choices for a pickup.
Way too much overhead stocking them. I’ll bet half of them never get ordered
They should do like Ford did 100 years ago. Choice of any color as long as it is black. That would save some money. What they are doing is not a new concept.
Good example here. When I ordered my 2023 Corvette htc I was very pleased with the price and quality of an 1LT setup. I was paying for what I wanted. Decided to add performance exhaust just for fun at $1150 and I was done. Then I thought…I really would like to have fold in mirrors. Not available. However, if you want to spend $7000 more you get the 2LT package with the mirrors….and wait for it….your Bose system goes from 10 speakers to 14. No thank you. I will just be careful backing out of the garage. lol. GM you have abandoned me by taking away my choices.
This new and revolutionary manufacturing idea (not) has been brought up in most GM Dealer Round Table meetings, most Dealer Marketing meetings, and most Dealer Council meetings for multiple decades always falling on deaf ears by the manufacturer because as we all know…..they know much more about the consumer and marketing than the retailer on the front line. In my 40+ years as a dealer, never have I been invited to preview and offer my opinion on a single upcoming design GM had been working on. You may recall many new product introductions completely missed the mark…and that’s being polite. I can’t speak for the import dealers however other domestic dealers will attest they have had similar experiences. Barra is the very best CEO in my 40-year history and second place is so far behind I can’t even think of a name. If she has one glaring fault it is trying to get too far ahead of the trends with ideas that will never produce substantial profits Cruse being the most egregious.
Years ago you ordered the model you wanted and then added the options you wanted. No unwanted items, like the packages today where you get stuff that you don’t want to get one item that you do want. This is really getting nuts!
Be nice if more prospective customers walked away from things with too much gobbledygook. What I don’t understand is with computerized assembly lines telling the workers on big screens what to install, why isn’t adding options to a vehicle much cheaper for the manufacturer than 50 years ago? As far as the wheel choice mentioned, I will agree that here there are too many choices, and I think the are ALL UGLY. So pick the cheapest one with the smallest tires which will get better gas mileage anyway.
For instance I walked away from a TOYOTA RAV4 PRIME purchase due to the fact I wanted one with a 6.6 kw charger facility…. I like using a public charger at lunch time – they are all in the 6 to 6.6 kw range in the area where I am, and the standard 3.3 kw units wouldn’t charge the car much over a lunch hour.
You had to order the premium trim option and several packages to get a 6.6 kw charger in lieu of the 3.3 kw one. Over $10,000 more (around $11,000 extra with the sales tax here) on an already super expensive vehicle just to minimally get it.
TOYOTA apparently found out many customers like me were walking….. Later models had the 6.6 kw charger in the base models also. But they lost my sale and many others, apparently due to this type of thing.
They learned from purchasing data and feedback that they configured the packages wrong. I’m sure they lost customer like yourself, but maybe the will gain others in the future. The important part is they learned from their mistake.
I whole heartly agree. Back in the day, it was called. “Ale-Cart” ordering. If GM made it, you could order it. Now, again, GM is working towards, selling us “packages” with more items than we want/need. Or having to buy that package, to get some lowly item you really want. Welcome to the third world of auto building/selling. We are almost done being a free and independent nation. What would the “Greatest Generation” say about this mess?
They would say, “stick the car where the Sun doesn’t shine”!
You make it sound as if someone wants leather, 22-inch wheels, and the most HP engine, but they still want roll-up windows.
They have a lot of buyer data to see what people normally buy and how much they want to pay. Packages are built around that. Sure there might be stuff you don’t want in a package, but you’re more likely to want 80-90% of it. The couple of things you don’t want you can live with.
Remember ordering my first new car when I got my first full time job in 1978, a 1979 Z28. Sat down with the owner of my small town Chevrolet dealer. We went down the option sheet and I picked every option available except just got an AM radio (as I wanted the 3 speakers and wiring down at factory), as I was to going to an audio sound shop in Memphis to get a Craig AM/FM 8 track installed. New new car after my daughter was born was a bigger,”family car”, an 84 Monte Carlo SS! Went down the option sheet with another family owned small town dealer five miles from my home again. Every small down had a “Chevy Place” back then. Those were the days.
No one even knows what they’re eliminating but they’re sooooo sure it will mean fewer sales. People need to get a grip. We have so many choices we don’t even know what to do with them, we have 196 channels but watch 8. We have thousands of restaurants but eat at 4. GM knocks the number of wheel choices from 14 down to 10 and we lose are freaking minds. Effing ridiculous 1st world BS.
“….. creating trim series that make vehicles easy to order, with the content customers want, and far fewer standalone options.”
Seems like a smart idea to me.
Remember the sales numbers from all the Big Three when a customer could sit down and custom order their vehicle? And the PROFITS these companies made? And how customers were satisfied with their purchase? We all have watched manufactures reduce the number of options of colors for exterior and interior, exterior paint to interior color matches, drivetrain options, options only available at specific trim levels, etc. I’d prefer to select those items and more when spending 35 to 100K on an automobile!
Friend has been trying to find a 2024 Colorado or Canyon “Work Truck” with very limited options and they are no where to be found in MS, AL, or TN within driving range. I am sure this in due in part to the KC plant being one of the first gm plants shut down by the strike. ALL the ones in transit are in the $50 or $60K range ZR2 types. They seem to focus on the units with the highest profit margins with the biggest option “packages”. They now seem to want to decide what you will buy, what they decide to build, not what you want or need. Many people are upside down from buying these expensive vehicles, even over sticker during covid years and this bubble will soon burst, again.
GM tried this ideology many years ago. One of GM and other American vehicle manufacturers best features has been the options and selections available to the buyer in recent years. Reducing options and features that results in boring cookie cutter vehicles will have the same outcome it did years ago. Reduced volume and reduced sales.
I see packages as a way for GM to make money, not save money, by forcing the customer to buy a package(s) to get the option they want.
Or making an option only available on a higher cost trim levei. To get power fold mirrors on a Silverado 1500, I would have to buy an LTZ or High Country trim, when I would rather buy an LT or RST trim.
Also on Silverado 1500; most trim packages include a sliding rear window, something l do not want, but to get options l do want, l am forced to buy.
Maybe it would save gm money if they allowed customers to delete unwanted options from packages. Then they may buy the package, rather than leave it off.
I think gm means making more parts standerdized ! Like they always have ! Everything from brakes – sensors – electrical connects – bolt hole patterns everything that works just fine ! Ford wont do this ! They leave no rock unturned when it comes to changing parts year after year and model after model
Maybe this what they are trying to do. If so, it makes some sense. If not, they are and will be, limiting our choices and jacking the prices. New vehicles already cost way more than the should. Remember the Wall Street movie…”Greed is Good” But not so much for the consumer.
Toyota did this years ago, and the sky didn’t fall. It won’t for GM either, despite the usual noise from some.
gm’s market share certainly fell
This isn’t a new idea. I’ve been retired for over 15 years and we did this ‘reduction’ long before I retired. I think it is just an excuse for the huge increase in average transaction price to help pay for the EV’s few people want by pushing more content onto vehicles.
I find it hilarious that GM presents this as a great, innovative idea, Volkswagen was doing this 15 years ago.
AND less replacement parts so cars can sit at the dealer for months and months with no clue when parts will be available!!! You are doing a great job MARy!!!!