At the second Annual Global Business Conference for investors and financial analysts, General Motors revealed details on a new plan that “will ensure a long-term sustainable performance” for the Detroit automaker.
Among other measures is the massive reduction of platforms used by GM brands globally in order to cut development costs and benefit from economies of scale.
“More of our components will be common and more of our vehicles will be on global architectures” said the GM CEO, Dan Akerson.
GM’s senior vice president of global product development, Mary Barra, revealed that the automaker plans to reduce the number of core architectures, parts and subcomponents, from 30 in 2010, to just 14 by 2018.
This will result in a dramatic increase of the number of volume selling cars and trucks that will be based on the same architectures from 31% in 2010 to 90% by 2018.
“Fewer vehicle architectures will allow us to get new products to market more quickly and improve quality by standardizing best practices across our development facilities” said Barra.
According to estimates, this will reduce annual costs caused by cancelled programs or last-minute changes to products by $1.0 billion annually. GM also intends to follow the same strategy on engine platforms, reducing their number from almost 20 in 2009 to less than 10 after 2018.
Sources: GM, Autonews
