Precision and Perspective: General Motors' Philosophy of Industrial Progress
I
WHEN the only records of discovery were myths passed along in folklore, the Greeks credited their hero, Prometheus, with stealing fire from heaven for his fellow mortals, and gave to Demeter, goddess of agriculture and fertility, praise for easing the toil of her earth-bound sons by granting them the wheel, greatest of labor-saving tools. Ever since those mists of antiquity dissolved, the most important business of mankind has been that of joining the gifts of Prometheus and Demeter by putting the power of fire behind wheels. The very pace of life depends upon the speed with which matter can be changed into energy available for transport.
Of old, the key men in transportation were stock breeders and coach makers; then inventors of steam engines and railroad builders. Now they are scientists and automotive engineers. The former discover ways and means of increasing the energy applied to wheels; the latter adapt these discoveries by balancing the ideal against the practical to improve motor cars. Like the composer of a symphony, the engineer must be aware of the myriad possibilities and limitations of the elements in his ensemble. The result of ever-improving engineering, which flows from the sense of proportion firmly held by large staffs of carefully selected specialists, is that most widely used of modern mechanisms — the gasoline motor car.
On this base has arisen almost within a generation an industry of worldwide influence, under whose impetus material progress for the masses has been accelerated faster than ever before. The achievements of yesterday or to-day outrun in meaning those of many a distant century. This industry is overwhelmingly American both in production and in point of view. Of the 33,330,000 automobiles used in the world in 1933, 72 per cent were owned in the United States. Even in that slack year nearly 2,000,000 passenger cars and trucks, worth approximately $1,000,000,000, were manufactured in the United States, of which nearly one eighth were exported. Tn the banner year of 1929, total United States and Canadian production reached 5,021,715 units, worth more than $3,500,000,000.
This output absorbs so much of America’s basic production that automobile manufacture is the nation’s key industry. It is the largest buyer of steel, rubber, plate glass, nickel, lead, mohair, upholstery leather, and malleable iron, and a heavy consumer of lumber, aluminum, copper, and tin. Automotive employment in all lines exceeds 3,000,000 persons, and indirectly another 1,500,000. When you buy an automobile, scores of industries and technical arts divide the proceeds.
In this pivotal industry General Motors occupies a central position. It manufactures and sells every year through its five car divisions — Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac-LaSalle, as well as General Motors Truck — approximately 40 per cent of all passenger cars and trucks manufactured in the United States. This volume of trade alone makes it one of the world’s most impressive businesses, of interest to everyone who desires to know how a large industry functions in arriving at commercial eminence. But General Motors has other aspects even more significant than size and success. Unlike many other great companies, its eggs are not all in one basket. It takes to market a wide array of products other than motor cars and their accessories, among them many household appliances. The most widely used of these is Frigidaire, the first electric refrigerator to reach quantity production, giving rise to successful developments in air-conditioning systems, for domestic and commercial use, sold under the same trade name. Another well-known name is that of Delco, applied to a wide range of electrical products for household, farm, and accessory uses. These stem back to the former Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company, forerunner of the present General Motors Research Division.
The seeds of scientific research will flower in many different forms; in the case of General Motors the developments are naturally associated with motor power. This explains the diversity of General Motors, a diversity which ranges from giant Diesels to tiny Durex bearings, from airplanes to household appliances. The need for precision in this variety of highly specialized products, together with emphasis upon the open mind in scientific research and engineering practice, has moved General Motors toward a balanced and steady point of view which is now its chief characteristic. This appears, as we shall see, in fields apparently remote from the engineering influence. Precision, ever more demanding through the years, in designing and manufacturing motor cars, has helped to create a perspective now dominant in all General Motors affairs.
II
The first gasoline engines were perhaps 5 per cent efficient; yet even these ranked high in contrast with steam engines. To-day the best ones are 30 per cent efficient and the efficiency ratio is steadily rising. Ethyl gasoline, developed by General Motors, played a very important part in this gain. But engineers and technicians still have plenty of leeway this side of perfection in recovering for public use the high potential energy of gasoline. The man behind the automobile wheel seldom realizes that he is using a fuel six times as powerful as nitroglycerine. With all its faults, faults more apparent to the specialist than to the layman, the automobile engine even in inexpert hands is several times more efficient than a steam engine in expert hands.
Significant socially is the fact that the owner-operator of a gasoline car is also the citizen who votes and pays for good roads and other traffic accommodations. America has been gaining a new landscape. Extension of hard-surfaced roads, broadening of urban, suburban, and countryside developments, centralized schools, and scores of other changes equally obvious and momentous, all result from social pressure to adjust the American scene to public desire for the fullest possible satisfaction from its favorite conveyance. Anyone who glances at the list of automobile references in the index to Recent Social Trends must be impressed by its massive testimony to the automobile’s influence on rural, community, family, church, and economic life. The American point of view has changed along with its landscape. We are not as sectional as we were, nor as stand-pat. We know that there is another side to every hill and depend largely upon scientific and industrial advance to push us over the top.
The safety of the motoring population, no less than its convenience and satisfaction, is an essential which automobile engineers jealously guard. It is easy for any smart engineer to exaggerate any characteristic of a car along almost any line. In fact, this is not nearly so difficult as wise design based upon proper correlation of the factors necessary to economy, safety, durability, ease of operation, style appeal, and riding quality, to mention only a few. Emphasis on one feature of performance may be at the expense of other features.
Many an ideal gain must wait until a way can be found to incorporate it in the car without disturbing the existing balance of forces and materials. Perhaps a new alloy is needed. The engineer must often mark time for the metallurgist, and the metallurgist for the chemist. The influences of the scientist, the technician, and the consumer meet in the engineering rooms, where through twenty-five years there has been evolving a balanced practice and philosophy of engineering advance.
III
At its birth in 1908, General Motors gathered together a number of automobile and parts companies, each independently operated. One of these, Olds Motor Works, erected the first American factory for automobile production. It pioneered in modern assembly methods and, in its famous Oldsmobile runabout, first reached quantity production. Another, Cadillac, had just won the Dewar trophy in London for the greatest contribution to automobile advance, by demonstrating the interchangeability of parts which is the key to the assembly line and to mass production. This naturally stressed higher engineering standards.
General Motors realized early that every model must be an engineering unit, planned from inception to carry a certain load, with each part designed in relation to all other parts. In an industry rapidly advancing both in machine shop practice and in scientific research, the less left to chance and whim the better. The process was one of reducing complications for users, at the price of increasing complications of engineering. Concern for customer peace of mind brought to pass a situation which would be considered remarkable if it were not commonplace. To-day the automobile buyer acquires at reasonable cost one of the most complicated machines ever devised by human ingenuity. He operates that machine without being aware precisely what mechanical and chemical processes he controls.
This engineering progress, by enhancing the personal mobility of millions, inevitably brought the great public into the automobile orbit. There began to develop, within an organization accustomed to the working out of precise relationships, a growing recognition of the manifold equities involved in its rapidly expanding business. Here again the sense of proportion, the feeling that General Motors was in business for the long pull, made itself effective. In its major relations General Motors arrived at a code of its own years before the word ‘code’ became a commonplace in industry. Its leaders perceived that in the long run General Motors would survive through the equitable nature of its dealings with certain large groups whose good will was essential. To stockholders it owed reasonable dividends and security; to suppliers it owed fair prices; to employees it owed good wages and salaries which would maintain a high purchasing power; to dealers it owed opportunity for fair profits; to customers it owed dependable merchandise and satisfactory service; and to the American people it owed such an administration of its affairs that it could never be justly accused of lack of candor or disregard of public interest.
Indication of the wisdom of this policy may be seen in a stockholder list of some 350,000 names. General Motors rejoices in this evidence of public confidence. Such a large stockholder interest gives news value to all General Motors announcements and financial statements. These are notable for their frank and detailed character, as befits an accounting rendered to thousands of persons with small stock holdings unaccustomed to interpreting condensed financial statements. Such trends and activities have led General Motors to think of and conduct itself as ‘a public-minded institution.’
These policies have borne results. Preferred stock dividends have been paid regularly, and only once since common dividends began have they been interrupted. When hours of work had to be reduced in the plants, a programme of work sharing was promptly inaugurated. The sum of $97,000,000 became available to participating employees from 1930 to 1933 inclusive through withdrawals from Savings and Investment Funds, accumulated through prosperous years as the joint result of individual thrift and company participation. When the Michigan banking troubles of 1933 left Detroit without a large commercial bank, General Motors joined with the Federal Government to establish the National Bank of Detroit. This it did entirely without hope of profit or expectation of remaining in the banking business, and thereby provided facilities for ordinary trade and industry in that community. At the first possible moment wages were advanced to pre-depression levels and in some cases beyond, while complete cooperation was given to the government in raising employment by shortening hours in accordance with code provisions. Recently the management has set up adequate machinery for resolving labor disputes through conference with freely elected representatives of its workers. The plan has been carefully considered and fits in with the traditions of a body of labor which was drawn into an expanding and high-wage industry largely from the fields and forests of Michigan, a population individualist by nature and traditionally more alive to personal opportunity than to collective action. This farsighted plan is the considered utterance of men who do not promise lightly.
From a survey of these developments, all the way from engineering and factory details up to the matters of broad social import, there emerge the outlines of a corporate character in which the dominant note is a wellbalanced sense of proportion. General Motors avoids ‘trick’ engineering and flashy financing, because it expects to be in business a long time. It cannot afford to hurry unduly a hopeful development; it can afford to wait until it is sure that every contingency has been foreseen by trained minds.
IV
In bringing the automobile thus far along, epoch-making changes, which seem to come like lightning, are usually the fruitage of patient years of study. Such was Charles F. Kettering’s Delco electric self-starter, in the days of the Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company. This great innovation was in the making for years before it became standard equipment on Cadillac in 1912. Again, although rear-wheel braking had developed an impressive body of brake knowledge by 1923, several months were required by Buick to work that knowledge over effectively enough to warrant the pioneer installation of four-wheel brakes. Engineers were aware that fitting brakes to front wheels involved an entirely new set of factors. This became a decisive achievement, since the new braking system, instead of being merely added, had been incorporated in the car with attention to every necessary chassis alteration. Still a third case is independent front-wheel suspension, popularly known as ‘ kneeaction ’ wheels. All new mechanical developments are rigorously tested at the 1248-acre General Motors Proving Ground, where every kind of terrain and driving surface is represented.
While divisional autonomy prevails in General Motors engineering practice, it is the special function of the Research Laboratories and the central engineering staff to conduct added studies along original lines, presenting the results to divisional staffs; to undertake tests and studies at the request of divisional staffs; and to advise with divisional staffs. Within this broad control final responsibility rests with the divisional engineers. They stand or fall by their products, and no limits are set upon their resourcefulness within the limits of sound practice. Standardization of materials is emphasized throughout; but standardization of thought — No!
For the sake of convenience and economy certain material specifications, such as screw threads, have been standardized; but in the realm of ideas and methods the emphasis is all on the open mind, not only as to specific improvements, but also as to new ways of fitting those improvements into a well-proportioned whole. Products are standardized only in the sense that for a given period a single model may be manufactured economically in quantity, but no sooner is that model in production than engineers begin the improvements which will mark its successor. Experiments are under way to-day which may be five years or more in reaching the public. When a variation has been tested market-wise by one division, it is thereafter available to all divisions. Thus, as in the case of the electric self-starter, crank-case ventilation, and synchro-mesh transmission, the step may first be taken on Cadillac, the highest-priced car in the line, and then applied to the less expensive cars as costs and circumstances permit. An innovation may be used first on a quantity car, as in the case of Duco lacquer finish, before being extended to other cars. Or, after thorough laboratory and Proving Ground tests, a change may be made in the general line, as was the case with both knee-action wheels and no-draft ventilation.
Fuel research provides a striking example of the untrammeled activity of the General Motors Research Division in its influence on the engineering staffs of car divisions. About fifteen years ago engineers awoke to the fact that inferior fuels were limiting engine efficiency. Endeavors to secure more power from an engine of given size were checkmated by the ‘knock,’ characteristic of the gasoline then available. Years passed before the fuel, rather than the engine design, was recognized as the culprit, after arduous scientific detective work. Thousands of compounds were burned in a cylinder under observation. Of these, several silenced the knock by delaying the burning of the last of the fuel charge, thus removing the over-high pressure due to almost instantaneous combustion. At last one such compound seemed to have commercial possibilities. This was tetraethyl lead, then expensive simply because it was produced in small quantity. A new industry, which in its present stage involves the recovery of bromine from sea water and opens possibilities of recovering other values from the treasure house of the sea, had to be developed before the result of these chemical researches could be utilized by the public.
The story of Ethyl, trade name of an anti-knock compound for mixing with gasolines, is one of the great pursuit tales of science, similar to that of Edison’s search for a satisfactory electric light filament. Not the least of the achievements of Ethyl research was to raise one of the limiting factors in engine design and to set the stage for a series of improvements hitherto not feasible. Technical advances matured in this thorough way benefit General Motors and its customers directly; they also become part of the ever-growing body of knowledge which society inherits, each generation becoming richer than its predecessor in means of controlling natural forces and elevating living standards.
Many General Motors innovations increase employment through stimulating activity by suppliers of new materials; others prove decisively beneficial in great industries altogether outside of the automotive field. For instance, note the welcome accorded by practical railway executives to General Motors improvements on the Diesel engine, long manufactured by its subsidiary, the Winton Engine Corporation. Streamlined trains, the stainless-steel Burlington Zephyr and the aluminum M-10,001 of the Union Pacific, electrically driven by current generated on the train itself, have recently broken American records for sustained railway speeds on long runs. As yet their speed possibilities have not been fully attained. This stirring development, which has brought new life to railroads, was initiated by an industry generally held to be their most pressing competitor. By applying to Diesel engines the knowledge gained through concentration upon gasoline engines, General Motors came to the rescue of another transportation industry in which, for reasons not at all discreditable, large-scale research and experiment had been neglected.
Perils of leadership beset the engineer in all fields, particularly in the automotive industry. For example, General Motors assumed heavy risks when it revised the whole low-cost car situation by making Chevrolet a six-cylinder car, thereby sounding the death knell of ‘fours’ in the passenger car field. To reequip its factories for the enormous production which followed cost as much as the entire capitalization of some good-sized companies. The result was to give a decisive twist to automobile progress and to make Chevrolet the most popular motor car.
Looking backward, it is easy to see that every improvement in process and product by General Motors has benefited the entire industry no less than the public. The electric self-starter, which overnight doubled the potential drivers by adding women to the number, was hailed as impracticable. When Buick adopted four-wheel brakes the cry of ‘ danger ’ was raised in advance of public trial. In lesser degree, but nevertheless sufficiently to emphasize the penalties of leadership, these demonstrated successes were put through the wringer of criticism — Duco, crankcase ventilation, Ethyl gasoline, tiltbeam and multibeam headlights, the intake silencer, automatic choke, and synchro-mesh transmission. More recently Fisher no-draft ventilation and individual front-wheel suspension have established themselves as features likely to enjoy long public favor. The newest contribution is the all-steel roof, or ‘turret top,’ to appear in the 1935 General Motors line.
General Motors’ philosophy of business includes the conviction that the public can be trusted to reject changes which either lack merit or involve enough care and expense to offset their merits. The common sense of a mechanically-minded people soon discovers the difference between a decisive improvement and a mere ‘gadget.’ The latter may do precisely what it is intended to do. But if what it does is relatively unimportant, increases hazards, or decreases comfort, it soon dies a natural death. A recent example was the free-wheeling device, which works admirably but to no important purpose, and involves extra operating risks.
Extreme streamlining is another innovation which will probably lose its appeal gradually, although not without influencing designers toward new beauties in line with the youthful science of aerodynamics. President Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., recently analyzed the subject of streamlining of automobiles as follows: ‘The popular belief is that there is a very distinct gain in the general efficiency of a design embodying certain aerodynamic features. The operating conditions of these various instrumentalities of transportation1 are so different that each must be considered on the basis of its own individual circumstances, so far as the question of efficiency is concerned. As applied to motor cars, in which General Motors is primarily interested, there are in reality no important economies in the practical sense of the word, in either first cost or operating cost. The greatest possible gain that can be expected is a somewhat higher top speed, or perhaps at top speed a slight saving in fuel, all other circumstances being the same.’
V
In a business characterized by huge volume and high preliminary expense, Airplanes and streamlined Trains.—AUTHOR innovations cost money. They are profitable when they win acceptance, burdensome when they fail. To eliminate guesswork, General Motors has undertaken to guard against marketing blunders by studying public moods and desires in advance of production. The Customer Research Staff of General Motors discovers what automotive improvements the public most desires, and passes that information on to engineering staffs.
Ingenuity of approach, thoroughness of investigation, and volume of information from all parts of the country combine to make this a unique guide to engineering policy. More than 500,000 motorists have answered the bureau’s questionnaires, including 81,000 ‘sophisticates’ with evident expert knowledge. These alert enthusiasts are eyes and ears for General Motors throughout the nation, reporting what they see and hear and think. Always ahead of the rank and file, they indicate what the public will be looking for in the near future. In practice, a balance must be struck between what the mass mind will accept and what the sophisticate desires.
Customer research shows that purchase of a motor car is one of the most serious decisions taken by the American citizen. Since the average automobile is replaced once in four years, John Doe may be considered as in the market only that often, his buying ardor lasting for some sixty days, during which period he expects to have his wants taken seriously. He takes counsel of his family and resents being rushed off his feet by ‘high-pressure’ salesmen. The buying mood of to-day is sober, deliberate, and insistent on full information, an attitude which is in complete harmony with the whole General Motors point of view.
Selling has become sales engineering, a matter of calm study rather than strong argument, a business of weighing trends and giving the public what it wants.
Of course, customer recommendations do not always bear immediate results. The situation is analogous to house building, where the customer expresses desires but leaves it to the architect to incorporate the suggestions in the plan, if the budget permits and the amateur ideas are not impracticable. Customer research is thus an avenue of contact between users and designers, of value to both in the long run as a means of avoiding guesswork and snap decisions.
VI
With all its scientific research, with all its engineering technique, with all its inquiries into customer preferences, General Motors recognizes that these would be of no avail except for the loyal cooperation of skilled factory employees who bring the ripe wisdom of experienced craftsmen to the solutions of problems not reducible to blueprints.
In General Motors factories one frequently hears this sentence: ‘Our best output is men.’ And with it another: ‘We can do it, because we have the men.’ The organization which normally employs more than 200,000 persons in its world-wide operations remembers that personnel is the foundation of the pyramid; the men who make, vend, and service the goods can break the engineer’s heart and the company’s reputation with the public. Management is aware that its engineers and its factory men, working together, have built its prestige in the market place. In both human and trade relations, as well as in the engineering progress which General Motors has made available to the public through its products, harmonious, equitable coöperation is the goal.
This, then, is General Motors, drawing on the past but looking also to the future, as indicated by its watchword, ‘An Eye to the Future— an Ear to the Ground.’ This reflects a determination to give the public what it wants in better products year after year, and at the same time to protect consumers against questionable experiments. In financial solidity and volume of trade General Motors ranks among the world’s leading business organizations; but equally noteworthy is its growth toward policies and methods of procedure which give it survival value beyond those of inventory and balance sheet. To these it has been led after calm fact-finding; after balancing against one another all the considerations in its complex problems, precisely as its engineers and scientists bring the open mind and a due sense of proportion to bear upon the technical problems involved in design and manufacture.
Industrial engineering has grown in this case to possess social implications. As the need for perspective has been heightened by the engineering precision which has made the motor car a commonplace in modem society, so the exact thought habits of science have been followed until perspective has been transferred to non-engineering fields and relationships in an attempt to see the responsibility of modern industry steadily and see it whole. This suggests the classic definition of the task of philosophy, ‘to see life steadily and see it whole.’ The disciplined and coöperative intelligence manifest in this vital industrial grouping is a direct result of the long schooling man has undergone all through the ages under a great and driving imperative to put power, more power and ever more power, behind wheels for the increasing convenience and prosperity of society.
Copyright 1034, by General Motors Corporation, New York, N. Y. All rights reserved.