Ford’s Job 1 Is Not Be Another Sears?

Remember how near-defunct Sears’ rep for quality & service was golden until it wasn’t and now fixing Ford’s Quality Has Become Job One before it’s too late for it, too? Sears tried do-overs & too often failed. Ford?

As the WSJ article noted, “Ford used to tout the reliability of its vehicles in ads. After a string of recalls, the auto maker is trying to change how it finds problems.” Recalls of its Expeditions, Navigators & Mustangs was the responsible (as well as legally mandated) thing to do. But, “that’s not good enough,” conceded Josh Halliburton, who joined Ford in January as its new Executive Director of Quality to reverse its recall record, the worst in the US auto industry the previous year. “We want to be a quality leader.”

So, did once family-friendly Sears. And yet, every time it tried to reverse its downward spiral in the face of increased competition from other leaner and meaner retailers like Target & Wal-Mart, its woes only grew worse. Restoring a lost reputation can be harder than it seems and the 46-yr-old Mr. Halliburton who was a JD Power advisor on production quality turn-arounds, thinks Ford’s ticket to a ride back to prominence involves “how the company identifies its problems” in the first place. Good luck with that one, as “Tesla and other rivals for electric-vehicle superiority” already have a leg up on Ford in the years ahead.

Davd Soul