Living with the customer: a time of change for automotive engineers

Manufacturing industries are on the verge of a whole new way of doing business.

“Surprise and delight” is a phrase close to the heart of Richard Parry-Jones, Ford's Group Vice President, Product Development and Quality. It is also close to the heart of the consumer - and Parry-Jones believes it needs to be close to the heart of every automotive engineer in the world. The consumer is becoming extremely powerful, he warns, and that power, along with the intellectual awareness that goes with it, signals the need for major changes that challenge many long-held philosophies about the “right way” to design, build, and market cars. Car makers have to create new products and services that consumers have not even asked for, he believes - because they don't know what is possible. “Only the engineers know what is possible,” he said.

Giving the Royal Academy of Engineering's 1999 Manufacturing Lecture “Engineering for Corporate Success in the New Millennium,” at the Royal Society in London, Parry-Jones underlined the broad role of the engineer in every automotive design and manufacturing company: “He or she is the driving force behind innovation. It is no longer good enough to go to the marketing department and ask what the customer wants. Engineers have to live with' their customers, to understand their underlying needs, their aspirations, their lifestyles and their dreams. And they have to understand major societal forces that shape the way those customers behave in the future.”