Is GM attacking good complexity in its supply chain?

Filed in archive Point of view on November 28, 2008

Torbjörn Thorsen, the Swedish author of IBX Group AB has written a short piece about the current SCM movements of GM.

One interesting point I read in his post is the following (the full post can be found here): "...platform and parts consolidation has been accelerated to such a point that (from a Swedish perspective) the front-wheel drive is one of the few things that separate a Saab from say a Chevrolet or a Cadillac or an Opel".

Even though he is very skeptical about this issue, I don't think that bad about platforming and modularity in the product families and across them. Modularization will really help companies to reduce the complexity through the whole chain: from the design cycle till the service departments which will keep lower SKUs.

But there is one key role here: "There is good complexity and bad complexity": Good complexity is the one which the customer pays for; as long as the end user doesn't care or notice about a commonality, that's fine and we can use modularity but if that's the one that the clients really value: Then it should be kept.