Chrysler Joins Clock Cutting Craze

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

What do you do when you’re out of time? Get rid of all your clocks! GM has already taken the humiliating measure of cutting clock maintenance from the RenCen budget, and Chrysler is now following suit. William Wolf of Chrysler Paint, Pilot and Facility Operations notes over at Chrysler Blog that “every little bit helps.” But Wolf wasn’t satisfied with the mere $10K in savings that cutting clocks yielded. Eliminating rooftop parking to save plowing costs will save over $300K, while halving the number of fluorescent bulbs at the Auburn Hills Chrysler Technical Center will yield $400K. And despite the bitter Michigan winter, Chrysler has dropped the temperature at the CTC by four degrees, saving $70K annually. And yet, somehow, not everyone’s happy.

The only comment so far on the cutback blog post gives voice to the frustration of employees stuck in a penny-wise, pound-foolish company that everyone knows is going under. Tenbagger comments:

“Great Job, Bill!! At this rate, by the end of the century we will have recouped the hundreds of millions of dollars AME Senior Management lost on the Patriot/Compass launch. You remember that launch. That’s where AME Senior Management decided to blindly outsource the body shop and not require the supplier to follow our standards or involve our Engineers. Thank God with the new reorg we lost those managers….NOT. We couldn’t afford to lose that talent now could we? You can force me to use both sides of the toilet paper if you’d like, but until we lose the no talent never waz’s running our AME organization, our fate is sealed”

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • Dadude53 Dadude53 on Feb 27, 2009

    @50merc: "AME" stands for Advanced Manufacturing Engineering within Chrysler. You need to understand the history a little bit to fully appreciate "Tenbagger`s" response. AME was responsible for completely tooling up a plant(Paint, BIW, TCF) and always had to be fully "cost conscious". That department was mainly responsible for the manufacturing competitiveness Chrysler held in the `90`s and successfully erected Chrysler plants around the globe.(Austria, Brazil, Argentina etc-all gone now)until it got busted by their glorious new management. The gentlemen "Tenbagger" is responding to actually is the son in law of a former Chrysler manufacturing exec who "qualified" for his post solely through "family ties" and has a proven record of incompetence.

  • Ronman Ronman on Feb 27, 2009

    that is hilarious, although cost cutting is not, and should have been implemented decades ago. why run 100 lightbulbs if 50 will efficiently do the job? but my main pain is not the lightbulbs or the snow shovels, rather the pick heads runing the operation and the collective sack of rotten potatoes that call themselves board of directors that keeps these guys (gimps) there. Come on america, you preach about accountability all the time, and yet no one is held accountable....

  • Windswords Windswords on Feb 27, 2009

    I just wanted to point out that if none of these cost saving measures were implemented at either GM or Chrysler some people would be complaining that they are wasting money - taxpayer money no less. It's a no-win scenario. And God forbid they do something nice for their employees - like an employee appreciation day party with food, a band, some prizes, etc. There would be some who raise hell saying it was a "waste" of taxpayer money.

  • Oliver Oliver on Feb 27, 2009

    From the Chrysler Blog: One recent change we made: we’ve gone from two to one fluorescent bulb in the overhead lights in our offices at the CTC. The adjustment took more than a simple flick of the light switch, but the savings are enormous – about $400,000 in the first year alone. With fewer bulbs to replace, those savings will grow over time. We’ll also save from reduced cooling costs – those lights add a lot of heat, even in the winter. Dim bulb doesn't even begin to capture it...

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