CO RPO RATE P RO F I LE
GM Chairman and CEO
Dan Akerson (fourth row,
third from left), GM CTO
and Global R&D Vice
President Jon Lauckner
(fourth row, fourth from left)
and Global R&D Executive
Director Gary Smyth
(top) with the GM R&D
Operations Research team.
supply chain and logistics systems, building new markets and creating new business opportunities.
The work is multifaceted, but whether in Detroit, Frankfurt, Sao Paulo or
Shanghai, the goal is straightforward:
offer products and services that establish and maintain a deep connection with
customers around the world while simultaneously generating revenue and profit
for the company.
Considering the complexity of the
challenges in the auto business and
the speed at which change is occurring
in every arena – technology, business,
materials and resources, governmental
policies and regulations – it is critical to
employ a scientific approach in thinking about and attempting to understand
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A N A LY T I C S - M A G A Z I N E . O R G
problems and implement viable solutions. Today, no area of GM is untouched
by analytical methods.
THE EARLY YEARS
Even before the industry entered the
current period of globalization and profound technological change, operations
research was valued within GM. As early
as the 1960s and 1970s, GM employed
analytical techniques for transportation
studies and traffic flow analysis. In the
1980s, GM developed analytical principles and used mathematical optimization
methods to improve assembly line job
sequencing. In the 1990s, it patterned
warranty cost reduction analyses after
Centers for Disease Control epidemiology studies.
W W W. I N F O R M S . O R G