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    NRM Case Study (Topic 1) - How General Motors Is Collaborating Online

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    Shihab ehsan
    General Motors used to take over 4 years and crash 70 physical prototypes to design a new car model. They have transformed their process to enable online collaboration using IT systems. Now, GM electronically shares 3D design documents and tests virtual car crashes online with its 20,000 internal designers and 1,000+ key suppliers. This allows for real-time joint work, cutting the design time for a new model to less than 18 months and costs by over 10%, while only crashing 10 physical prototypes.

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    NRM Case Study (Topic 1) - How General Motors Is Collaborating Online

    Uploaded by

    Shihab ehsan
    152 views1 page
    General Motors used to take over 4 years and crash 70 physical prototypes to design a new car model. They have transformed their process to enable online collaboration using IT systems. Now, GM electronically shares 3D design documents and tests virtual car crashes online with its 20,000 internal designers and 1,000+ key suppliers. This allows for real-time joint work, cutting the design time for a new model to less than 18 months and costs by over 10%, while only crashing 10 physical prototypes.

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    NRM Case Study (Topic 1)- How General Motors Is Collaborating Online

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    General Motors used to take over 4 years and crash 70 physical prototypes to design a new car model. They have transformed their process to enable online collaboration using IT systems. Now, GM electronically shares 3D design documents and tests virtual car crashes online with its 20,000 internal designers and 1,000+ key suppliers. This allows for real-time joint work, cutting the design time for a new model to less than 18 months and costs by over 10%, while only crashing 10 physical prototypes.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    152 views1 page

    NRM Case Study (Topic 1) - How General Motors Is Collaborating Online

    Uploaded by

    Shihab ehsan
    General Motors used to take over 4 years and crash 70 physical prototypes to design a new car model. They have transformed their process to enable online collaboration using IT systems. Now, GM electronically shares 3D design documents and tests virtual car crashes online with its 20,000 internal designers and 1,000+ key suppliers. This allows for real-time joint work, cutting the design time for a new model to less than 18 months and costs by over 10%, while only crashing 10 physical prototypes.

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    of 1

    0006D_c04_125-174.

    qxd 9/26/03 10:02 PM Page 169

    MINICASE 1 169

    Minicase 1
    How General Motors Is Collaborating Online

    The Problem teamwork. These tools have radically changed the vehi-
    cle-review process.
    Designing a car is a complex and lengthy task. Take, for ex-
    To see how GM now collaborates with a supplier, take as
    ample, General Motors (GM). Each model created needs to
    an example a needed cost reduction of a new seat frame
    go through a frontal crash test. So the company builds pro-
    made by Johnson Control. GM electronically sends its
    totypes that cost about one million dollars for each car and
    specifications for the seat to the vendor’s product data sys-
    test how they react to a frontal crash. GM crashes these
    tem. Johnson Control’s collaboration systems (eMatrix) is
    cars, makes improvements, the makes new prototypes and
    integrated with EDS’s Unigraphics. This integration allows
    crashes them again. There are other tests and more crashes.
    joint searching, designing, tooling, and testing of the seat
    Even as late as the 1990s, GM crashed as many as 70 cars
    frame in real time, expediting the process and cutting costs
    for each new model.
    by more than 10 percent.
    The information regarding a new design and its various
    Another area of collaboration is that of crashing cars.
    tests, collected in these crashes and other tests, has to be
    Here designers need close collaboration with the test engi-
    shared among close to 20,000 designers and engineers in
    neers. Using simulation, mathematical modeling, and a
    hundreds of divisions and departments at 14 GM design
    Web-based review process, GM is able now to electroni-
    labs, some of which are located in different countries. In
    cally “crash” cars rather than to do it physically.
    addition, communication and collaboration is needed with
    design engineers of the more than 1,000 key suppliers. All
    of these necessary communications slowed the design The Results
    process and increased its cost. It took over four years to get Now it takes less than 18 months to bring a new car to mar-
    a new model to the market. ket, compared to 4 or more years before, and at a much
    lower design cost. For example, 60 cars are now “crashed”
    The Solution electronically, and only 10 are crashed physically. The
    shorter cycle time enables more new car models, providing
    GM, like its competitors, has been transforming itself to an GM with a competitive edge. All this has translated into
    e-business. This gradual transformation has been going on profit. Despite the economic slowdown, GM’s revenues in-
    since the mid-1990s, when Internet bandwidth increased creased more than 6 percent in 2002, while its earnings in
    sufficiently to allow Web collaboration. The first task was the second quarter of 2002 doubled that of 2001.
    to examine over 7,000 existing legacy IT systems, reducing
    them to about 3,000, and making them Web-enabled. The
    Questions for Minicase 1
    EC system is centered on a computer-aided design (CAD)
    program from EDS (a large IT company, subsidiary of GM). 1. Why did it take GM over four years to design a new car?
    This system, known as Unigraphics, allows 3-D design 2. Who collaborated with whom to reduce the time-to-
    documents to be shared online by both the internal and market?
    external designers and engineers, all of whom are hooked 3. How has IT helped to cut the time-to-market?
    up with the EDS software. In addition, collaborative and
    Web-conferencing software tools, including Microsoft’s Sources: Compiled from Sullivan (2002), press releases at gm.com,
    NetMeeting and EDS’s eVis, were added to enhance and from amrresearch.com as reported by Sullivan (October 2002).

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