Excellent read....
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| Makoto Konishi: “Sometimes added cost is necessary. To spend the money to beat the competition, it's worth it.” |
SAN DIEGO -- If there is any question about whether smart engineering
is on its way back at Honda Motor Co., one need look no further than
the second-row "magic" seats of the 2015 Honda Fit.
In an
impressive display of packaging, not only does the second row give
plenty of legroom and headroom for a 6-foot-tall person to sit --
unheard of in a subcompact car -- but the seats fold down seamlessly to
the level of the hatchback's cargo area.
Sure, the seats cost
more -- Honda declined to say how much -- to engineer and build than
conventional seats. But a conventional seat -- as seen in the Ford
Fiesta, Nissan Versa and Hyundai Accent -- has nowhere near the same
occupant space and does not fold flat with the cargo area. To Honda's
engineers, the seats are worth every penny.
"It depends on how
you think about it," said Makoto Konishi, the Fit's chief engineer or
"large project leader" in Honda parlance. "Sometimes added cost is
necessary. To spend the money to beat the competition, it's worth it."
That
level of confidence from a chief engineer has been sadly lacking from
Honda for more than a decade, as purchasing-, finance- and
regulations-obsessed executives ran roughshod over Honda's engineering
culture.
But after a series of product-launch miscues and
meltdowns -- starting with the 2001 Civic and culminating with the 2012
Civic -- Honda had its moment of clarity: The automaker that once was
willing to spend a couple of extra bucks to deliver smart engineering
needed to return to its roots. Cost-down and fuel economy solutions
still would be important, but no longer paramount.
With the 2015
Fit, engineering detail after detail is done the way of company founder
Soichiro Honda:
elegant solutions based on customer-first decisions.
Sometimes, it's visible, with better packaging taking priority over
aerodynamics. Sometimes, it's felt in the driver's butt, such as the
subtle change in the design of the torsion-beam rear suspension that
makes the Fit's handling more responsive.
"If you go cheap, and
it doesn't sell, you don't win. If it's going to cost $50 more, and you
don't do it, you don't win," Konishi said. "We are trying to give birth
to things that are different from the competition."
That this is
happening with Honda's $17,000 entry-level car can only spark the
imagination for when Honda cascades those improvements up through the
model line.
If the 2015 Fit is any indication, Honda has its mojo back.
In
its glory days of the 1980s and '90s, Honda's main mission was to
engineer a better car that flattered the driver, even if it was slightly
more expensive.
But after Japan's economic bubble burst in 1991,
bean counters began playing a larger role in Honda's strategic and
product planning. The culture of dynamic driving and smart packaging
took a back seat to meeting cost and corporate average fuel economy and
safety standards.
For Honda watchers, the turning point came when
Honda ripped out the supple, double-wishbone front suspension in the
2001 Civic and replaced it with a cruder, cheaper MacPherson strut
setup. Honda's rationale was that it improved the engine bay layout --
and it cost hundreds of dollars less per unit. But Honda purists were
outraged.
Still, within Honda, the band played on, as management
continued to believe that consumers still worshipped Honda vehicles.
Riding the red-hot car industry, the Honda brand rolled to 11 straight
years of record U.S. sales, through 2007. It collected scads of J.D.
Power and Associates quality and APEAL -- for Automotive Performance,
Execution and Layout -- awards.
But after a string of poorly envisioned products (see chart
, Page
3), Honda stopped winning APEAL awards. Although Honda still was near
the top in Power's quality rankings, its product execution was turning
it into a commodity-car brand, with rising incentives to show for it.
As
engineering took second priority, the nadir came with the 2012 Civic,
which was savagely de-contented in anticipation of the recession
crimping consumers' spending habits. The interior was subpar, with
inferior materials and fabrics. Noise, vibration and harshness were
punishing and un-Honda-like.
Consumer Reports removed the Civic
from its "recommended" list for the first time in memory, calling it
"cheap" and "insubstantial." Although Honda sold a ton of Civics, it
paid a fortune in incentives to move the metal.
This was the
inflection point for Honda, and crisis thinking took over. CEO Takanobu
Ito took the blame for the lousy Civic, but he also put heat on his
engineers to make it better -- fast. The underlying message to chief
engineers for subsequent products:
engineering and quality over cost.
With
a quick turnaround of a nearly clean-sheet, no-holds-barred redesign of
the Civic for the 2013 model year, Honda rescued one of its most
important vehicles. It also started applying the Civic's lessons to the
development of the CR-V and Accord. Although both products were well
down the development path in r&d terms, both showed measured
improvements over their predecessors, especially the Accord.
The first vehicle that would benefit fully from the new thinking would be the Fit.
"The
Fit reflected on our experience with the Civic," Konishi said. "How
much would we be willing to do to save cost or improve fuel economy?
Would we be willing to make the car smaller to get better fuel economy?"
One decision, together
Even from Day 1 of r&d, Honda engineered the Fit differently.
"In the past, for a global car, we would design it for Japan first, then ask, 'Is it OK?' to the U.S. or Brazil," Konishi said.
Problems from any regional market meant patchwork solutions.
This
time, when engineers took the concept to Ito, he collected all the
regional leaders and said, "'Let's decide this once, globally,'" Konishi
added.
Instead of letting the purchasing or finance departments
have decision-making power over engineering development, Honda let its
engineers be creative, then told the purchasing department to make it
work somehow -- just like in the old days.
"If we did everything
we wanted, that meant the cost would go up, so the purchasing department
had to work very hard," Konishi said.
The mission was to create a
global car that could be manufactured anywhere in the world with a
maximum of locally sourced parts. By getting early input from all the
regional r&d centers, Honda was able to cut costs by up to 20
percent and channel those savings back into better content.
To
improve the Fit platform's purchasing leverage with suppliers, Honda
also performed the r&d work simultaneously on the Fit, the Fit-based
crossover coming later this year and the City sedan that was launched
in emerging markets in January.
Such a move was risky.
Communication among the variants' engineering teams was crucial so that
all decisions were in alignment. Purchasing executives, sales managers
and manufacturing engineers also were brought on board much earlier. It
didn't help that Honda was simultaneously opening a plant in Celaya,
Mexico, to build the Fit. It also meant some hard choices, such as
deciding not to sell hybrid and sedan variants in the United States.
"Of
course, there were business decisions to be made," said Rick Schostek,
Honda North America executive vice president of strategy, governance and
support. "But when the engineers had their ideas, we knew that going
with the lowest cost might not be the best way."
"If
you go cheap, and it doesn't sell, you don't win. If it's going to cost
$50 more, and you don't do it, you don't win. We are trying to give
birth to things that are different from the competition." - Makoto
Konishi, Honda
Standing their ground
In looking at the second-row seats, packaging was paramount.
"During
the course of a five-year product cycle, at some point, our various
features will be overtaken by others," Konishi said. "So the packaging
had to be smart enough to last through the life cycle."
To make room for the seats to fold flat, the fuel tank's profile was squished flatter, even though capacity didn't change.
"With
the Insight, we wanted good fuel economy and really good aerodynamics,
even if it meant a bad second row and cargo area," Konishi said. "For
the new Fit, we put the packaging in place first, then did the aero. The
functional requirement came first."
In other words, if having an
impressive second row meant sacrificing a few tenths of a mile per
gallon in fuel economy, so be it. If Honda needed better fuel economy,
the improvement had to come from the engine and transmission.
Honda
made the engine better through direct injection -- arriving rather late
to this technology party, to be sure -- mated to Honda's legendary VTEC
variable valve timing system. Engineers lightened the crankshaft by 27
percent by narrowing the crankshaft journals -- which connect the
crankshaft to the engine's connecting rods -- and used four
counterweights instead of eight. Although the engine's horsepower jumped
by 11 percent to 130 hp, with the new continuously variable
transmission, fuel economy improved by 16 percent to a best-in-class 33
mpg city/41 highway.
There were other notable developments on
which the r&d team refused to budge. Interior fabrics, materials and
standard content are excellent for a budget car. And far less road howl
and wind noise enter the cabin.
As for ride and handling,
subcompact cars typically are saddled with an antiquated, cheap chassis
to keep costs low. All have a variation on the torsion-beam rear
suspension that has been in use since Conestoga wagons roamed the
prairie. While stuck with using a torsion beam, Honda strengthened it by
crimping the underside so that its shape is less like an "O" and more
like an inverted "U."
A steel industry study shows this
torsion-beam method is more expensive to create. But because the new
design requires fewer patches and metal inert gas welds, it's less
brittle and has better torsional rigidity, Konishi said. In a daylong
comparison road test, the handling of the new Fit was more supple and
responsive -- yet another way Honda flatters the driver of an
inexpensive car.
"This car represents our values," Schostek said. "It's what a true Honda is to us."
The road to perdition
There were danger signs when Honda began developing its vehicles to be
beholden to cost, fuel economy, aerodynamics and market research, as
opposed to delighting the customer.
• 2008 Accord
Weakness: Too big, ponderous, floaty
• 2009 Crosstour
Weakness: Styling in need of rhinoplasty
• 2010 Insight
Weakness: Poor packaging; mpg less than Prius
• 2011 CR-Z
Weakness: Neither sporty nor fuel efficient
• 2012 Civic
Weakness: De-contenting run amok, poor driving dynamics
Source;
